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SCHOOL BOARD PATROL -- The Minneapolis School Board, which still hasn't finished dealing with it's $29,000,000 budget deficit, has recently fired 419 nontenured teachers, and they may end up firing up to 100 or more tenured teachers before they wrap up their budget discussions. This amounts to an approximately 9-11% cut of the nearly 5,000 teachers the district employed during the 2002-03 school year. The teachers being let go have been warned that this time, unlike in previous years, they probably won't be rehired at the beginning of the school year.

The layoffs of classroom teachers are part of the district's "master plan" to cut $10,000,000 from the budget by increasing class sizes--in violation of the deal they made with voters in 2000. Some of the teacher layoffs are also necessary because the district will enroll about 1,400 fewer students in 2003-04 than they did in 2002-03, no doubt in part because parents who have seen Johnson & Co's handling of the district are bailing out, instead enrolling their children in private or suburban schools (God bless Open Enrollment!).

Other budget balancing measures include saving $3,000,000 by holding the line on salaries, reducing "administrative services that support schools" by $9,000,000, and cutting $6,000,000 from individual school budgets. These measures, and possibly others, will be the topic for the board's June 24, 2003 meeting, where they are supposed to approve their final budget for 2003-04.

Minneapolis' Layoff Methodology Must Be Modified

Because of union pressures, the layoffs are only affecting new teachers--even the tenured teachers who are being let go are picked based on time of service, rather than performance. This means that good teachers who just happen to be new to the profession are being shown the door, while crappy teachers who have been able to protect their job while teaching precious little get to stay on the payroll. Using this firing formula not only increases layoffs (since new teachers are paid less, more must be fired to cut a given amount from the budget), it decreases teacher quality. Plus, for those concerned about racial representation, it creates another problem: since a large number of the minority teachers in Minneapolis are untenured, the number of non-white teachers (who currently comprise just 18% of teachers) will plummet. Because of this, minority children, who comprise 75% of the student body in Minneapolis, will see almost no adults--role models--that look like them during their school day.

The Big Picture

The district has been whining for over six months now about their shortfall, but when you look at the numbers, the situation doesn't look so dire. The district's 2002-03 budget was $484,000,000. Their expenses for 2003-04, if allowed to grow at current levels, would total $496,000,000, an increase of 2.8%. But the district's projected revenues would only cover $467,000,000 of that bloated budget, and so, the district said they had a $29,000,000 deficit, despite the fact that the real deficit--if they kept spending at current levels--would only total $17,000,000.

A REAL SPENDING CUT will finally be made!

Of course, this means that, if the district approves this budget plan as expected, we will finally see the Minneapolis schools cut spending, though only by 3.5%...and we haven't gotten them to close Pencil-Pusher Central either. Still, this is a good step toward reining in the Board of Education...and that's something everybody can get behind.--Mr. T Bagger, Editor-at-Large

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