School Districts Play The Lay Off Then Re-Hire Game Again

Since last year, many school districts including Fort Bend ISD and Houston ISD have laid off hundreds if not thousands of teachers only to create job openings weeks later to rehire some of them back or to hire new people in old positions that teachers were forced out of. In the article below we can see this happening in Houston ISD and is about to happen again, for the second year in a row, in Fort Bend ISD. This absurd strategy of getting rid of too many classroom jobs, laying off very few if any administrative jobs and then rehiring to fill some of the positions they gave up weeks before is mind boggling. While school administrations may have found a loophole to get rid of bad teachers, they are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. 
The emotional toll on classrooms and on teachers around the state cannot be weighed.  What must be counted is a teacher's unwillingness to give one hundred percent to the classroom and a child's and parent's insecurity in the education system. If a teacher, librarian or classroom aide has little to no job security, do administrators or elected officials really believe that that will have no impact on classrooms? Do they actually expect teachers to wait around to see if the old school district that so easily pulled them out of the class they were teaching to tell them they didn't have a job next year was going to rehire them over the summer? What kind of public confidence does this create in our broken local school administrations?

Let's not forget that Dr. Jenney of FBISD created several new administrative positions which paid between $100,000 and $200,000 so that he could bring in his former colleagues from Virginia.  And as far as we know, very, very few original administrative positions have ever been cut to meet Fort Bend's budget demands.


We know that FBISD is not indicative of all administrations in Texas, but what's to stop them from doing the same thing?  Certainly not the Texas legislature or Governor Perry.  If anything the upcoming legislation puts more power in the hands of administrators, less in the hands of parents, teachers and ultimately the future of Texas children.

After laying off hundreds of educators, HISD may need to rehire teachers | abc13.com

Is the Houston Independent School District putting out a "help wanted" sign? After making several painful cuts in its teaching staff, the state's largest school district now says it may have let too many teachers go.
HISD has never before laid off so many teachers, yet there is word the state's largest school district may rehire more than 300 teachers.
More than 700 teachers have been laid off so far. Add to that an additional 600-plus teachers who opted for early retirement or resignation. However, at Thursday's budget workshop, the board heard the cuts may have been too deep.
New numbers from administration show 326 teaching positions may need to be filled. Those positions are to be in core subjects, such as math and science. Teachers who were laid off will be given first consideration for those jobs.
But there is skepticism among the teachers' union that new teachers, not those laid off, would also be in consideration to fill some of those vacancies.