It’s that time of year again. The time of year when school officials make final decisions about which of their teachers will stay and which will go.
Most Alabama school districts will have fewer teachers funded through the state’s Foundation Program, the main source of funding for most districts. That’s one downstream effect of drops in public school enrollment since the start of the pandemic, and it may mean some job cuts.
How schools and districts make those cuts is ongoing, with many teachers learning in recent days and weeks that they will not return next year.
Letting teachers go, particularly non-tenured teachers, happens every year, but this year’s loss of state-funded teachers is the biggest since the Great Recession, according to Alabama Superintendent Eric Mackey, when a few thousand positions were lost.
Ninety-nine of Alabama’s 138 school districts will have fewer state-funded teachers for the 2022-23 school year because of lost enrollment over the past two years, for a total of 230 fewer state-funded positions.
Non-tenured teachers – those who haven’t been working in a district for three years – are typically the first to be let go. Some districts told AL.com, though, that they believe normal retirements and resignations will fill most gaps, and that local funding also may help keep positions.
Mackey said he expects superintendents to have carefully considered where the cuts need to be made by this point, having told districts how many teachers the state would fund in January.
“So there’s no, ‘we’ve got to wait to see how many [teachers] we will have,’” he said. “They’ve known for months.”
Mackey said he doesn’t like to see districts make a blanket decision to let all of their non-tenured teachers go, which some will do with the idea of rehiring some of them before the new school year.
Alabama Education Association Executive Director Amy Marlowe said it’s difficult for teachers who are let go due to district budget concerns.
“Imagine having to go all summer–do I need to move? What do I need to do with my family? Do I need to enroll my children in a different school system?” she said. “The level of classroom instruction also goes down in those systems because the teachers have no choice but to go out to other school districts and get another job.”
When August comes, she said, districts that let teachers go may be the same ones that have lots of vacancies.
Alabama’s foundation program assesses state funding for teacher positions based on how many students are in each grade. State funding for schools is historically based on the previous year’s enrollment taken during the 20 days after Labor Day.
In 2021, with enrollment down by nearly 10,000 students during the 2020-21 school year, lawmakers allocated an extra $95 million for schools to keep from laying off hundreds of teachers.
Mobile County – the largest district in the state – has lost 3,000 students since 2019-20, which translates into 185 fewer state-funded teachers for next year.
Less state funding for teacher units doesn’t automatically mean that districts will cut positions, though. Some districts will use local money to make up the difference.
“We’re using local money to fund all but 50 of those teaching positions,” Mobile County Schools Communication Director Rena Philips told AL.com, and retirements and resignations should mean no cuts.
“It’s critical to keep as many teachers as we can,” she said, “because we, like everyone else, are dealing with the learning loss and mental health issues–all these things our entire country is worrying about.”
“The last thing that we wanted to do was lose all these teacher units,” Philips said, “because the most important thing that these children have is their teacher.”
Birmingham City Schools has lost 1,500 students across 31 of its schools over the past two years, costing the district a combined 127 state-funded teachers this year. Avondale Elementary School has lost 11 state-funded teacher positions – 38% of its 2020-21 teaching force – after seeing enrollment decline from 462 to 289 students.
It’s unclear how district officials are making the adjustments as they did not return a request for comment.
Conecuh County in south Alabama faces the biggest percentage drop in state-funded positions. The district will see a $1.5 million cut in foundation program funding and lose 24% of its state-funded teaching positions, dropping from 104 to 79 teacher positions.
Another 11 districts, most of which are in Black Belt counties, will lose state funding for 10% or more of teacher positions for the coming school year. It is unclear whether the districts will be able to find funding from other sources to retain jobs.
Hoover lost 500 students from the 2019-20 through the 2021-22 school years. As a result, the state funded 33 fewer teaching positions through the Foundation Program.
Assistant Superintendent Ron Dodson said the district will reduce its teaching force by 32 positions for the upcoming school year but are still working through that process.
“We can say that normal attrition did account for the majority of the lost units,” Dodson told AL.com.
Mackey said he believes public school enrollment has plateaued, and he’s looking to next fall’s enrollment as an indicator of long-term student trends.
“If we see another drop this fall, it’s probably not going to be COVID-related,” he said. “It’s going to be population-related.”
The table below shows the change in enrollment and state-funded teachers for the past two years and the coming school year. Click here if you can’t see the table.https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ALZUo/1/
