Indianapolis Public Schools Cut 163 Jobs

When it comes to the workers in the field of public education the current economic slump must have felt like a sudden drop, just with a serious delay. For many schools in states all across the county the money from the federal stimulus was keeping a fair percentage of workers in their jobs. This money, which was meant to help schools ride out the worst of the economic downturn and give them ways to plan to make responsible budget cuts when the money came to an end, cuts that would not short change the students in their schools. This coming school year the stimulus money is gone, as many places still struggle with high unemployment and low tax income from businesses and individuals the schools are getting ready to cut back on staff in a big way. They are making changes that in some districts are impacting a fairly high number of staffers.

Today we are going to take a look at the cuts being made to the Indianapolis Public Schools. The school board has, this week, approved cuts to 163 positions in the school district. 94 of those positions will be from in classroom educators. These job cuts to both side of the schools staff are designed to help the district to shore up a sizable hole in its coming years budget. The schools need to be back by about $27 million in order to meet the requirements of the next year’s school budget.

The layoffs are more than enough in number to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current federal guidelines. 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.” When a mass layoff action is taken the employer in question has to meet special standards of notification, giving workers and the surrounding community more time to prepare for the loss of income, which can have ripple effects. Traditionally the time is used to help workers find new jobs before their old one is gone, but in education in the current circumstances that idea could be little more than a pipe dream for many of the soon to be displaced workers.

This is not the first time that Indianapolis Public Schools have had a problem. The state will be, in the coming year, taking over the management of four schools. The schools are being taken over because they have, for the last six years in a row failed to get a passing score as a school under the current state guidelines. This failure to show improvement means that the schools will now be run by the state officials directly.