360 IN HOUSTON INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT WILL LOSE JOBS

The Houston Independent School District cut 360 jobs Wednesday, handing out proverbial pink slips to administrative workers in departments from police to the main office. District spokeswoman Heather Browne said the layoff is a first for HISD. The layoff, ordered last month by the school board to help shore up an estimated $160 million budget shortfall, affects 117 employees who will learn by the end of the week that they are no longer needed. They take with them anywhere from two weeks' to three months' pay in severance, depending on their time with the district. Another 220 or so will be given the opportunity to compete for half as many jobs combined into a smaller administrative staff.

"We don't anticipate the changes to have a negative impact on the district," Browne said. "Eventually the change will have an impact on departments that have a reduced number of employees who see an increase in their job responsibilities." The district also eliminated 100 positions that had not been filled. No teachers were laid off. Including teachers, HISD has 30,000 employees.

District number crunchers expected layoffs, an early retirement package for other employees, lowered supply costs and a reduction in consultants fees will combine for $100 million in savings for the 2003-04 school year. Uneasiness settled in the ranks as details of the layoff spread throughout district offices. "Why would anybody feel safe to apply for their job and stay with the district?" asked Gill Maldonado, an HISD police officer targeted for layoff along with other officers who were told they must take a competitive test to stay on the force. "What's going to happen to them next year when there's another round of cuts?"

Even with shedding jobs this year, the district is heading toward an estimated $50 million to $60 million deficit for the 2004-05 school year. Superintendent Kaye Stripling said in December that skyrocketing health insurance costs and an expected dip in state funding forced HISD into a budget crisis. Wednesday morning, employees waited anxiously to find out if their days with the district were over. After an e-mail announced the firings, supervisors talked one-on-one with workers. Some left their offices immediately, while others said they would wait out the March 28 deadline for departing. Receptionists and secretaries awaiting a moment with the boss commiserated over hope and despair.

"I wish they would fire me," said a woman walking out of the Hattie Mae White Administration Building, the district's central office. "I would take that severance and leave today." An office worker at Dunlavy Technology Center said competing for one of the redefined jobs is a losing proposition. "Even if you get the job, you are going to lose your standing and come back with a $6,000 pay cut," she said. "If I wanted to take a pay cut, I would have become a teacher." The woman and others spoke on condition of anonymity because they still do not know if their jobs are in jeopardy. Employee unions, who said they have had good relationships with the school board in recent years, promised to fight to get some of the jobs back. Retha Thomas, president of the Houston Educational Support Personnel union, said 64 of the journeyman painters and four air conditioning workers she represents were laid off. About half of them will apply for jobs with an HISD contractor, she said. The other half will apply for jobs within the district.

"Either way, they're going to lose benefits and take a pay cut," Thomas said, adding that the layoff is aimed at easy targets, people she said are among the lowest paid. "HISD has been cutting us from the bottom for years. They need to start cutting from the top now. That's where the fat is." The Houston Federation of Teachers may file suit to block some of the layoffs, said group President Gayle Fallon. The federation represents more than 800 employees in the district's 30,000-member work force, including teachers. Woeful tax revenue, expanding costs and shrinking state support have pushed many districts coast-to-coast to cut jobs -- sometimes even among teachers. Last year, the Los Angeles Unified School District slashed $385 million from its budget, in turn increasing class sizes and cutting back on building maintenance. Philadelphia privatized some of its schools. Edison School Inc., the surrogate administrator, eventually laid off 212 former Philadelphia public school workers.

Locally, schools are jittery about an expected $1 billion shortfall in state funding over the next two years while struggling with their local financial crises. Spring Branch Superintendent Yvonne Katz told principals and department heads Wednesday to reduce their current budgets 5 to 10 percent and put a freeze on the hiring of non-teaching positions. "The priority," said Spring Branch spokesman Bob Sharp, "is to keep any reductions away from the classrooms." Sharp said that as revenue projections for the next school year become more definitive, a budget review team will recommend areas of reduction. He could not say if the district faces layoffs like in HISD. "It's too soon to tell," he said, "but the projections from the state are looking pretty dismal."

Cypress-Fairbanks, the second-largest district in Harris County, cut 60 custodial workers, three administrative jobs and a secretary so far, Superintendent Richard Berry said. Still trying to protect classrooms from budget slashes, Cy-Fair has not yet figured out how to prevent a $3 million to $4 million shortfall.

This economic situation is somewhat worse than people think. When a public school system begins to cut administrative staff, you are seeing an unprecedented move...especially 360 people. When they cut teachers, then we are in a full-blown depression. My question continues to be: Where are people going to get jobs? The only jobs out there are low-paying jobs.

Time to aggressively start booting illegals out, teaching American citizens to work harder for less, and reducing ALL social spending. Failure to do so will see us deteriorate into a situation of massive political, social and financial upheaveal.

Our town announced the same type of cuts. Lot's of loud crying about it. The board held the plan above the town's head waving it like an axe, thinking the town would step in and open up their wallets.

Well the town said "good riddance to them" When a part-time school bus driver (3hrs a day/200 days a year) gets a $15,000/yr pension after 10 years of service to qualify, the public really doesn't want to hear it.

Well, after all the threats, and the public not being scared by the school board once again....A funny thing!!!! A full six months into their new budget and not one position was ever cut.

I'm sure our situation was on a much smaller scale than Houston, but I assure you that six months after all the supposed cuts are going to be applied, you'll be lucky to see 10% of them in reality.

More than that, it's time for massive tort reform, eliminating the EEOC, putting a leash on the EPA, OSHA, and all the other agencies that make running a business in the US a pain in the butt. If you want jobs in America, we must make running a business in America an easier proposition

Couldn't agree more.

sounds like that in your town the school administrator people are just plain not responsive to the public. This has been happening all over the country for decades. The only solution is school choice, some type of voucher program. In this manner when the management of a school system is unresponsive to public needs the free market can reduce the resources provided to them. This is what is required. Otherwise, the professional education class will simply walk all over us. Where does George Bush fit in here? He doubled spending on the department of education from 30 billion to 60 billion, so Bush stands for further empowering this professional educator class even though we have every evidence that this class of people simply does not serve us. With 60 billion dollars a year you could give out $6,000 scholarship vouchers to 10 million kids a year. If the federal government had done this, somehow selected 10 million kids to get these vouchers, either because their school districts are failing or because the selected kids are elite in their abilities, then this would've taken huge financial pressure off of local school districts where those 10 million kids live. This could've very well saved these big cuts in the Houston system.

I agree with you, but it is obvious that you are anti-republican and especially anti-bush if this is how you feel. I'm anti-republican and especially anti-bush precisely because I agree with you.

in my home state, Arizona, they had actual cuts in education spending, that is real cuts before inflation even from one year to the next. They also had to release some prisoners early because they just didn't have the money. And this in a state where population is growing rapidly as in Texas. At the same time the biggest growth industry in arizona over the last 10 years has been the gambling casino industry. This industry is highly profitable and is not taxed by the state at all. Only Indians are allowed to own these casinos and these people are put on a pedestal as if they're special. The citizens in arizona can't bring themselves to tax everyone equally. That is a very large root cause of our budget problems. And our new governor, just elected, was elected because she told the Indians that they were a special group of people who couldn't be taxed. They voted for her 99%. And the new governor wants all these huge spending increases to be financed strictly by borrowing. We're building disaster for ourselves and yet nobody in arizona can stand up and say that the indians should be taxed the same as everyone else.

HISD, according to this article, employs over 30,000 people. The cuts represent about 1% of their workforce. Excluding teachers, would it be safe to say that these cuts represent less than 5% of their administrative workforce?

When they start cutting the real fat in administration, i.e. associate superintendants and vice-principals, that's when it will be real news to me.

Some facts that they WON'T tell you...

HISD had 210,670 students in 2002.

If there are 25 students per teacher, that would require 210,670 / 25 teachers, or 8427 teachers.

But as they have 30,000 employees there are (30,000 - 8427) / 8427, or 2.56 NON-TEACHING employees per actual classroom teacher.

HISD claims many folks as "teachers" who really are not, so they'd dispute the above number.

In fact, there are probably more students per real classroom teacher than the 25 figure I use, making the 2.56 more like 3 or so.

What do all these people do? Well, you sure as heck don't need that many full-time bus drivers, cooks, janitors, principals and school secretaries. The vast majority are "administrators" and "education specialists" and other worthless parasites that feed on the education system while making a negative contribution.

HISD doesn't need to cut 360. They need to cut at least 13,000 to get the admin versus teacher ratio somewhere nearer 1:1.

Of course, with less money spent on parasites and less time wasted on BS generated by the parasites, teachers would have more time to teach and the money would be there for new facilities, and more teachers.

But of course, the educrat bureaucracy doesn't give a damn about education, only feathering its own nest.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.