Pink slip season for teachers getting tougher

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Posted March 21st, 2011 by Charlotte Draper No Comments »

More than 2,000 Sacramento-area educators received pink slips recently. Some will have the preliminary layoff notices rescinded before the May 15 deadline for final notices. Most will not.

School officials are waiting to see if the governor’s proposed tax extensions are put on the ballot, and if voters would approve them. Until then teachers holding pink slips wait, their lives on hold.

Here are some of their stories:

Worried about class size

Josh Costa attended elementary, junior high and high school in the San Juan Unified School District before becoming a teacher.

Costa, 32, says he’s gotten a pink slip almost every year since he started working in San Juan Unified in 2004. They’ve always been rescinded.

Teaching is in his blood. His mother was a principal and district administrator.

“This is something I’ve always wanted to do,” Costa said. “I have a great passion for teaching and helping others.”

Students at Sierra Oaks Elementary School benefit from Costa’s passion. They are learning to play the violin. He orchestrated after-school music sessions because, he said, research shows that learning a string instrument improves student learning overall.

Costa brought in a violinist from the Camellia Symphony Orchestra and procured instruments and music books for the weekly lessons.

Now, Costa is waiting to see if he’ll return next year to the school district he loves.

His concern is that layoffs mean larger classes and less time for remaining teachers to spend with each student.

“It’s not about making our lives easier,” Costa said. “It’s about giving one-on-one time, one-on-one assistance. This is when they are learning to read and write, and are building their core and foundation.”

Costa said he’ll return to San Juan Unified as a substitute if he is laid off.

“I come in with a smile and I leave with a smile every day, and I put the children first,” he said.

Dusting off rsum

Brooke Sims picked up her pink slip at the Stockton post office on a recent Saturday.

The fifth-grade teacher at Irene B. West Elementary School in Elk Grove had been expecting it. She’s had a pink slip each of the four years she’s been teaching.

Last year was the first time the layoff notice wasn’t rescinded by the end of the school year, so Sims, 28, packed up her Sacramento apartment and moved back in with her parents in Stockton.

“The question was ‘Do I keep my apartment or pay my car bill?’ ” Sims said.

That year it didn’t look likely that the teacher who had taught kindergarten at James McKee Elementary in Elk Grove for three years would be rehired.

Finally, she got the call and became a fifth-grade teacher.

“My father got laid off and I was actually able to help my family,” Sims said.

Less than a year later, Sims is brushing up her rsum. She isn’t very hopeful that the pink slip will be rescinded in May this time, even if tax extensions are passed by voters in June. This year, 37 of her school’s 55 teachers got pink slips.

“It’s our most-impacted school,” said Elizabeth Graswich, district spokeswoman. In past years the district has sent pink slips to teachers with one to four years of seniority; this year it’s teachers in midcareer, she said.

The layoffs are affecting students, Sims said. One girl suggested in class that each family pitch in $20 so teachers wouldn’t be laid off.

The second-generation educator says she always dreamed of being a teacher.

“I love being a teacher, but I need a job,” she said. “I worry that when it does turn around, I’ll be in another profession.”

Administrator nervous

Earl Chamberlin said he wouldn’t want to bump a teacher for a job even if he could.

The vice principal at New San Juan High School just collected his third pink slip in his three-year career as an administrator. “I’ve been a proud winner every year I’ve been here,” he joked.

Chamberlin said he has been fortunate in the past, but this time San Juan Unified plans to cut at least six vice principal jobs if the proposed state tax extensions fail.

Chamberlin, 36, isn’t optimistic.

“It’s disheartening,” he said. “You get nervous when you don’t know where your next paycheck is coming from.”

But he says he understands why the San Juan Unified board made the choices it did, and supports the board.

Chamberlin said his biggest regret about layoffs is the loss of young, enthusiastic teachers. He said students find it easier to relate to teachers closer to their own age.

“It’s important they feel they can go to teachers,” he said. “That relationship piece is critical.”

Pink slips ‘a little unfair’

Year after year of being handed a pink slip is starting to wear on Jason Allen, who teaches third grade at James McKee Elementary.

“It’s really frustrating that things are out of our control,” Allen said. “It feels a little unfair.”

Initially, the pink slips didn’t faze him.

“Lately it gives you a little more of sense of hurt,” Allen said. “Like what you do every day isn’t valued.”

The teacher said he has received a pink slip for four of his eight years as an educator.

Allen, who recently bought a house in Carmichael with his wife, isn’t certain his next job will be in education.

His future is in limbo.

“Am I supposed to get everything out of my classroom? Will I be teaching in August? In July at a year-round school?”

Allen said that at least four teachers at James McKee received pink slips.

“There is definitely an overall feeling of being beat down and demoralized,” he said.

Feels lucky to teach

When Cole Cooper bought his house and started a family, the Cordova High history teacher couldn’t anticipate what four consecutive years of pink slips would bring.

“It starts a yearly job hunt, which is very stressful,” Cooper said. “Even when you apply, there are so many applicants and you usually don’t hear anything back.”

So far he’s been lucky. The pink slips were pulled back each time. But this year he may have to wait until summer to learn his fate.

The 27-year-old teacher is the sole wage earner for his family of four.

Despite the turmoil, Cooper doesn’t regret becoming a teacher.

“I tell people every day that this is the greatest job in the world and I feel lucky to do it,” he said. “I get paid to open the eyes of the youth to different questions.”

JY Teachers