With the tangled web that is the recent budget and budget repair bills, it’s hard to be able fully grasp everything that will be affected in the upcoming months. However, one of the strands in the sticky web Walker spun that is not to be overlooked is teacher layoffs in Dane County school districts. UW schools are not the only ones getting the short end of the stick on education funds, and many are faced with impending layoffs.
In a bold move in a meeting last Friday, Madison schools superintendent Dan Nerad announced that although area teachers were supposed to receive preliminary notice, layoffs will be delayed by at least two months and maybe indefinitely.
When the protests started, everyone dropped what they were doing and rushed to the Capitol. For many teachers at university, high school, and primary school levels, this meant cutting class to rally for bargaining rights. But now the honeymoon period is over, and all those teachers have to face the real implications of the protest and its aftermath.
For starters, according to the Wisconsin State Journal, about 300 below-university level teachers would have received notice that they were being laid off for the following year. This is a state deadline that unions can debate and have extended, but the bargaining power of teachers will not last for much longer if Walker’s bill takes full effect.
For now, though, superintendent Nerad and the Madison Teachers, Inc. (MTI) have pushed the date to May 15.
“In two months, we will have a better sense of whether we will have any (layoffs) or how many,” Nerad said. “We’ll have the benefit of better information.”
The Wisconsin Association of School Boards, on the other hand, urged local schools to agree on staff cuts by the original day, Monday, to avoid any legal backlash that the Walker administration could dredge up.
It’s an important concern, and it brings up other issues surrounding the protests that could have legal ramifications. For instance, there were four days of cancelled classes due to the protests, and it remains to be seen how those days will be made up. In a state that accounts for every extra snow day, this is a big question left unanswered.
And what is to be done about the teachers that missed work to attend the rally? According to John Matthews, director of MTI, Nerad and the 2,700-member union have been in talks and amnesty is still on the table. However, complete absolution may be out of the picture if Walker gets his way, and there is no telling what those protesting teachers could face if he does.
The Poynette School District delivered preliminary layoff notifications this week to 16 of 86 employees, according to Barb Wolfe, district superintendent. In the Hustisford and Monticello School Districts, layoff notifications have been given to all employees indiscriminately and will be reevaluated when further information comes to light. Sun Prairie and Middleton-Cross Plains school boards have extended the deadline until April 15.
When he attempted to slash bargaining rights, Walker looked to accomplish exactly what is happening now: the disorienting and scattering of the once coherent and powerful teachers’ unions. The teachers unions should band together while they’re still strong and come up with a statewide response to Walker’s measures. If they don’t retain their solidarity now, then Walker has already won.
Taylor Nye ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in biological anthropology.
