Slashing paraeducator staff not a shining moment for Tacoma School Board
We’ll say this about the coronavirus pandemic: It’s given individuals and institutions a shot at a defining moment, the kind that only happens when adversity hits and true character is revealed.
The Tacoma Public School District Board is having one of those moments. Last week the board cut loose 104 paraeducators from TPSD employment rolls and reduced hours for over 300 more, which means they and their family members will no longer receive benefits including health insurance.
But money’s tight in this freefall economy and tough decisions have to be made, right?
Wrong. The decision to lay these workers off, many of whom work closely with special-needs students, was ostensibly not about money; it had nothing to do with a deficit or any upcoming budget gaps. The decision was about contract work, ruthless, them’s-the-rules contract work.
Paraeducators are part of the Tacoma Federation of Paraeducators (TFP), AFT Local 461, and a collective bargaining agreement required the school board to notify paraeducators of staffing assignments by June 1. Since the district is still unclear what those needs will be, they chose to lay off or reduce the hours of 80 percent of the more than 600 paraeducators.
Assistant Superintendent Lisa Nolan made the recommendation and had this to say at last Thursday’s school board meeting: “The real driver is the fact that there’s uncertainty in the service-delivery model and we’re not able to define the work that we need right now.”
For those who don’t speak education bureaucracy, allow us to translate: “We don’t know what the heck we’re doing come fall.”
The board spent a good chunk of last week’s Zoom meeting defending the decision, along with the bad optics of giving Superintendent Carla Santorno a $9,000 pay raise. (Come on, people, even if she earned it, did you have to choose that moment?)
Though most board members received dozens of emails from students, parents and staff upset by the move, no member put up a fight or protest; they merely asked questions.
It’s true the collective bargaining agreement impacted timing, but rather than ask for a deadline extension or come up with new models for how paraeducators could be used, the board chose to let them set sail on a sea of uncertainty.
Santorno received a letter signed by eight state legislators objecting to the mass layoff. The bipartisan group made a strong point: “Many of these students will have increased need for behavioral, emotional, and academic support as a result of the school closures and the pandemic.”
The school board thinks it can ameliorate the sting by invoking the recall clause, a don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you philosophy so often heard in our gig economy.
As Nolan said, “We will recall paras when a learning model becomes clear and we’ll work hard to define that. We are just not able to define that model holistically at this point in time and the job description today may not be the job description in the fall.”
These are unprecedented times, but flexibility and innovation should be a built-in skill set for educators. Tacoma is the only district in the state to have announced cuts of this kind.
It should be noted that special needs students will be provided with the same level of services, but they may not have the same paras they’ve worked with in the past. That’s just one more in a long list of disruptions that kids will experience this fall.
One paraeducator told us that from March until June 19 when school ended, he and his colleagues stepped up and did whatever schools asked of them.
They were the folks who lined up in front of schools, handing out meals and running day camps. They helped essential workers not have to worry about their kids when those workers reported for duty on the frontlines.
Paraeducators from the Tacoma Public School District were some of the unsung heroes in the state’s COVID-19 response, and now, sadly, most are out of work.
This story was originally published June 30, 2020 at 12:00 PM.