Flint, Michigan Cuts Teachers

The city of Flint, Michigan is not really known for too much on the national level, unless you count its association with a certain well known documentary film maker and some interesting labor issues in the automotive industry. Today however Flint will get a new distinction added to its record. The schools in Flint are about to layoff more than 200 teachers in order to shore up a hole in the schools budget for the coming year. On Tuesday the school board approved the layoff of more than 200 teachers for the coming school year as the district makes cuts to plug a very large hole in their budget.

The job cuts, which will impact about 237 in classroom educators when all is said and done is designed to plug up a shortfall of about $20 million that the school is facing for the budget in the upcoming school year. These kinds of cuts make teachers, who once believed that their jobs were stable; to reconsider their positions and deal with life after the tenure contracts have been broken.

The school has broken down the layoffs by the grade level of the teachers who will be cut back, but has not at the current moment said which schools particularly will be taking the brunt of the staffing cuts. Of the 237 jobs to be lost 108 will come from the elementary school’s teachers and another 129 will come from the secondary school’s teachers. The school layoffs will, according to sources close to the vote, say that every school in the district is set to be impacted in some way by the budget cuts.

In addition the school board has also voted to close four of the school districts middle schools. The schools that will be closed at the Bunche and Summerfield elementary schools as well as two of the middle schools in the district as well.  The closure of the middle schools means that a fair number of the middle school students will move into the high school buildings.

These job cuts will be more than enough to qualify as a mass layoff action. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” This type of preparation is designed to help the soon to be displaced workers and the surrounding community to prepare for the job cuts to come, and the inevitable ripple effect that the loss of income will have on the surrounding community. Though in the current job market, and the fact that the bulk of a teacher’s direct work experience will in a classroom capacity the prospect of finding a new job before the cuts go into effect, even with the extra notice time allotted, seems to be a slim chance at best.