On the same day that Liz Samuels unpacked her last box, one month
after moving into her new home, she and about 600 other Tucson Unified
School District employees received pink slips.

The Reynolds Elementary School first-grade teacher was stunned; she
knew the economy was a mess, she says, but she didn’t expect to start
this new chapter of her life by losing her job.

Samuels, 52, bought her new home with her 26-year-old daughter,
Erin; they moved in together to help raise Katie, Erin’s daughter and
Samuels’ 6-year-old granddaughter. Both mother and daughter are
first-year teachers—Erin works at Robison Elementary—and
both received the layoff notices.

Now, the two are wondering whether they will get their jobs back in
August. Samuels says it is tough at her eastside school, where the kids
are asking teachers whether they are coming back, and parents are
worrying about what the school will look like next year.

“We’ve built a very trusting relationship with our parents. A lot
are worried, because they don’t know who is going to be in these
positions. Who is going to be teaching their children?” Samuels
asks.

Beyond the teacher layoffs, Reynolds, like all TUSD schools, was
also asked to prepare for a 10 to 18 percent budget cut, in an effort
to deal with an expected $50 million in education cuts handed down by
the state Legislature. As a result, Samuels says, the school will no
longer have a counselor, a librarian or a librarian aide.

One result of all these cuts is the potential dismantling of the
education teams that principals have put in place.

“I feel we have an exceptionally strong principal who is very
collaborative. We want to be there for her and do our best for her,”
Ann Pastirik says. “… I’ve just come out of a staff meeting. It is
very sad. This is a raw pain. People are coming up to each other,
hugging each other and crying. We’re a close team.”

All teachers yet to work a full three years in TUSD received pink
slips, because the school district is not obligated to offer teachers
contracts until after they’ve worked in the district for three
years.

Pastirik, who teaches second grade at Reynolds, is just a few months
shy of completing her third year; therefore, she got the layoff notice.
Unlike Samuels and other pink-slipped teachers at Reynolds, however,
she is in a different position: Her husband retired this year, and she
has decided to join him in retirement and avoid the drama of Arizona
education.

“Right now, it feels like we’re being put through a shredder, and
then eventually, we’re expected to put the pieces back together again
by ourselves,” she says.

Pastirik is referring to the recall process. Once the district knows
how the state’s final budget will affect schools, it can let employees
who received the layoff notices know whether they’ll have a job; that
could happen as soon as June, and as late as August.

Teachers have been told that the first teachers to be rehired will
be district transfers—teachers previously laid off due to
enrollment decreases. The next teachers to receive callbacks will be
those who are closer to having three years in the system. What troubles
Samuels and Pastirik most is that there’s no guarantee that rehired
teachers will be placed in their previous jobs.

According to Steve Courter, the president of the Tucson Education
Association (the teacher’s union), the district is required by state
law to rehire district transfers first; however, there are
exceptions.

Courter says schools with a special curriculum—like Montessori
or bilingual programs—will only accept certified teachers. As for
the concern shared by Samuels and Pastirik about returning to their
current schools, the district and the union signed an agreement
allowing teachers to declare a preference for what school, geographic
area and kind of classroom they want to return to in the fall.

“It is sad. This is unprecedented, but when I talk to a lot of
teachers out there, I am still impressed,” Courter says. “Think about
it: They want to go back to where they are teaching, and while no one
can honestly guarantee they will be able to, the fact is, a lot of our
teachers like their jobs and where they are teaching.”

Elizabeth Celania-Fagen, the TUSD superintendent, has yet to finish
her first year on the job. When she started, Celania-Fagen created a
school-choice plan that allows parents to place children in any TUSD
school. Part of the plan requires schools to each build a specific
curriculum, in an effort to help boost TUSD enrollment.

“As far as the budget goes, things have not changed, based on the
state budget projections as we still know them today,” Celania-Fagen
says. “What has changed is we have continued the process to make
further reductions in administration, to be able to keep as many
teachers as possible.”

As for letting teachers know whether they will have a job, she says
the district is stuck until the state budget is completed. But her
school-transformation plans remain in place.

“Even though (the budget-cutting process) is causing a lot of
heartache, we are still focusing on the future of the district,” she
says.

She’s had to battle accusations from state Superintendent Tom Horne
that TUSD erred by sending out all of the panic-causing layoff notices;
Horne’s also hinted that federal stimulus funds will save the day.
However, that assertion made Celania-Fagen realize that Horne may not
understand how the funds really work.

“He doesn’t take into account that the stimulus money is narrow in
definition. While those funds can go to programs like Title 1 and
special education … there are also strict rules around those funds.
We still need baseline funding across the board for all schools. Maybe
those funds can be used on top of that funding, but not instead of that funding.”

This article appears in May 7-13, 2009.