The Latest on Edujobs
Mike Antonucci at HotAir reports that at the same time that the $10 billion teacher jobs (Edujobs) bailout passed the Senate—and was expected to pass the House—lots of school districts were already hiring back the teachers they had pink-slipped last spring.
You may recall that many folks have predicted that the fired teachers would be hired back once new school budgets were in place. The pink slips were necessary because schools are required to give teachers notice in the spring if there’s a chance that they won’t have a job in the fall.
Joanne Jacobs notes:
Hiring people with one-time funds is now defined as “courage” by the Education Department, writes Rick Hess. During a June webinar, Maura Policelli, ED’s senior advisor for external affairs, told listeners to spend stimulus funds to keep teachers on the payroll. She said, “And that does require some courage because it does involve the possible risk of investing in staff that you may not be able to retain in the 2011-12 school year.”
Stupid seems like a better word.
Meanwhile, Education Gadfly’s Mike Petrilli says schools that use edujobs stimulus money are just kicking the can down the road. The money situation will have to be faced sooner or later and schools will have to learn to do with less. For one thing, the income from local property taxes is likely to remain down for a while because property values are down.
He suggests going back to staffing levels of early 90s, before the growth of non-teaching school jobs.
