One Dreaded Thursday...

What a week. I absolutely love my students and am having fun every day. Unfortunately, it can never be left at that. There has been a pile of stress this week from a whole new direction.

The district has 400 less students attending school than they anticipated. At $8,000 a student, that leads to $3.2 million less in incoming money this year. Therefore there are layoffs. 24 teachers were cut this week, making up the 400 student differential. Unfortunately, that leaves $2 million still to make up.

With less kids, there will be cuts to things such as food service, custodial, administration, etc. But 2 million dollars? The scenarios for what to do about that many cuts are just scary. Our official count day is Wednesday, and our classrooms can't have over 30 kids in them. However... after that time if they need to they can put as many kids in the rooms after that point as they'd like, cutting more teachers.

Everyone is on pins and needles. We helped the teacher from our school who was laid off pack up today. People are cranky, as adding kids to an established classroom shakes things up. Some are switching their assignments completely, moving from Kindergarten to 5th grade or getting a split classroom when they had 20 just this week. The union has held emergency meetings, including a meeting set for next week. The topic: Unemployment.

So I'll wait for Thursday with trepidation, wondering if anyone is going to remember to do what is right for kids.