City of Hammond Cuts 60 Jobs

Jobs in public education were once a pillar of safety and job security. Becoming a teacher meant that you could be guaranteed, once you got past the point of tenure which was only a few short years, you would always have a job to go back to. As long as you didn’t do anything illegal or immoral at work you were going to have a job. For many years that was the perception of public education jobs, and for many years that was truly the case. A job in a public school could easily be a job for life.

In the current economic downturn however the old logic is beginning to seem like insanity. More and more workers in public schools are becoming part of a serious budget trap. As people make less money they spend less and this means that there is less in the way of tax revenue coming in and that means that the government has less to spend everywhere, including the public schools. As schools are given less money to go around they have to figure out how to make it work, and sadly that means making cuts. In this current downturn there is also the increasing costs of everything from fuel to the foods for school lunches making the situation worse. That means jobs are on the chopping block in schools all around the nation.

Today, however we are going to talk about school layoffs in the City of Hammond. It looks like the schools in the City of Hammond are going to have to cut back on the number of teachers that they have for the coming school year. According to a plan that is currently being tossed around by the school board and the superintendent, the school may cut back on about 60 of their teachers. Those 60 jobs are being sacrificed on the alter of the budget cut. The school district has to cut back about $5.8 million in order to make its budget for the coming school year work and shore up the holes in their budget.

In this case however the school is not only dealing with a generally bad economy, but is also facing a decrease in the number of students, which is also impacting the need for teachers in the schools. On the bright side of this news the decrease in enrollment means that the schools class sizes will not be able to get too out of control when it comes to classroom size.

The school is set to send out its WARN notices, notices letting workers know that a layoff notice may come in the near future, by the middle of this week. These are required not only by federal law, as 60 jobs is more than enough to qualify as a mass layoff action, but also because most education unions in the nation also require a fair bit of advance warning for coming school year notifications in order to allow members to find jobs during the narrow teacher hiring season of the summer.