https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/10/featherbed-ed/
New data for the 2022-2023 academic year paints a disturbing picture. While students are slowly trickling back into public schools post-COVID-19, the same cannot be said for staff. The National Center for Education Statistics revealed an increase of 173,000 students in public schools, yet during the same period, a staggering 159,000 employees were hired, including 15,000 additional teachers.
Researcher Chad Aldeman provides specific examples of hiring trends in various districts across the country. He explains that about one-third of these districts added teachers while serving fewer students. For instance, Philadelphia lost nearly 16,000 students but employed 200 more teachers, dropping its student-to-teacher ratio from about 17:1 to under 15:1.
About a quarter of all districts followed the path of California’s Capistrano Unified School District, which lowered its teaching force over time but not as fast as it lost students. Capistrano suffered a 22% decline in student enrollment but reduced its teaching staff by just 7%.
Another group of districts saw an increase in student enrollments, but their teacher count has risen even faster. The Katy Independent School District, near Houston, added 4,299 students last year, a gain of 4.9%. At the same time, it hired 366 teachers, a 6% gain. Over the period, its student body increased by 22%, while its teacher count grew by 29%.
But as Aldeman notes, the future is murky: “As districts spend down the last of their federal ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief ) dollars, they may have to lay off staff or close under-enrolled buildings.”
If teachers must be laid off, the typical union contract stipulates that it must be done by seniority, or the “last in, first out” (LIFO) regimen. This industrial style of dealing with teacher overstaffing is typified by Michigan’s Ann Arbor Public Schools system, where the teacher union contract states that after considering years of experience with the district, if two teachers have equal seniority, the last several digits of a teacher’s Social Security number would be the tiebreaker for a layoff.