The gifted novelist Susan Straight (who teaches at UC Riverside) writes in the Huffington Post about the fact that, in California, and as a nation, we are willing to lay off a higher percentage of public school teachers than we are nearly any other profession. Straight questions why this seems like a sane practice, even in a bad economy.
Here are some snips from the essay, but do read the whole thing.
Last week was Pink Slip Week in California. All over the state, teachers got notices through certified mail that they might be laid off. Teachers around the nation have been getting pink slips for weeks, and this year, the possibility is even larger that they will lose their jobs.
The two words, in the American lexicon, are never good. Pink slip. The first time I ever heard it when I was young was when Kaiser Steel handed out pink slips to many of my neighbors and relatives. Layoffs were about efficiency, sales figures for raw materials or refrigerators. Kids might be “raw material,” in a strange sense, but they are not refrigerators.
Last year, federal stimulus money was used to plug holes in state budgets, and many teachers were actually rehired (23,000 pink slips were sent out in California during 2010.) But this year, with deeper and deeper budget cuts to education at every level — federal, state, and county — American schools will mostly likely lose teachers by the thousands. On March 15, more than 30,000 pink slips were mailed to teachers in California, according to the California Teachers Association, and last week, they arrived.
I know they arrived in my neighborhood because after work I saw my letter carrier, Randy, who carried a large sheaf of them. He was despondent about having to deliver the certified mail — “if it’s certified, and it’s today, I’m hoping they don’t answer the door,” he said. That way, he said, he wouldn’t have to see the faces of our neighbors who are getting the layoff notices.
Read the rest.