Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools employees started their Monday morning with a letter from Superintendent Peter Gorman notifying them that layoff notices are going out. It didn't offer specifics, but he has been talking about cutting about 1,500 jobs, including roughly 600 teachers. Some of those will be vacant jobs, and notices are usually spread out over the spring, with teachers getting theirs about the time final exams conclude. We're seeking more details. Meanwhile, here's the letter:
From: Peter C. Gorman
Sent: Monday, April 25, 2011 7:12 AM
To: cmsmailall
Subject: Budget Update
Dear CMS employees,
We have given our proposed budget to the Board of Education. In what has become a grim rite of spring, we will begin sending out letters to employees affected by the reduction in force. Our expected budget cuts have made this necessary.
The budget deadlines do not align well with the funding process, so we build a budget each year not knowing how much money we have. In earlier years, we have been able to rescind some of the letters to teachers and other employees when our funding exceeded our estimates. We hope that will be the case this year. But we won’t know for a while.
These cuts we have to make are large and they are painful. We will lose some good teachers and employees during this reduction. It’s not something we want to do but it is something we must do. We need our teachers. We need our teacher assistants. We need our media specialists and our campus security associates. But our expected funding requires us to reduce the number of employees. As always, we will make cuts in the central office first.
The reduction in force affects us all. Even if you are not among those receiving a letter of non-renewal or dismissal, you are touched by it. We lose colleagues and associates we have known and worked beside for years. It lowers morale and makes everyone anxious. It is upsetting for those directly and indirectly affected, which includes our students and their families.
The cuts will also affect our ability to educate our students. With such large reductions, I can’t ask you to do more with less or to maintain the same level of service. But I can ask you – and I am asking you – to continue to do your best every day so that our schools suffer the minimum of disruption. We still have a tremendous responsibility to provide the best education we can to every student. Thank you for your work and your commitment to this shared goal.
Pete
Peter C. Gorman
Superintendent
Government Center
600 East 4th Street
Charlotte, NC 28202
980-343-6270 -- phone
980-343-7135 -- fax
http://www.cms.k12.nc.us/
Monday, April 25, 2011
Gorman: CMS layoffs begin
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19 comments:
Good letter, but for those of us who have railed against corruption and inequitable spending in Raleigh, a BOCC that has spent hundreds of millions on "feel good" and "quality of life" projects like the Whitewater Center, NASCAR Museum, etc. and CMS with all its whining about needing bond monies for this and that, the time has finally come to pay the piper.
Let's see now-how many of these jobs could have been saved if we could get back that $1.9 million Gorman blew on PFP test development?
Too bad we have to let "trained, experienced" teachers go to make room for TFA's and such.
Also, start speaking up on turning down the bus change plan. Simply cut more from WSS to cover not having teachers working extra time for no pay since they have had no pay increase now for the third year.
How is it that he can say that he won't ask that teachers do more with less, then spend 1.9 million on testing to essentially rate teacher efficacy? What part of the teacher evaluation tool will reflect inordinate class sizes? Pete is a con artist!
So why doesn't he just cut his pay to save our teachers. See if he could make it on a teachers salary. Wonder how he thinks he got where he is if it wasn't for teachers. Well, I'm sure he will get his just reward when the time to answer for the way he treats people comes.
Good point about whether he could make it on a teacher's salary. How would he know; he wasn't a teacher long enough to know what being a real teacher is, so how can he relate? The blog mentions that the teachers being cut usually receive their letters around exam time. Very interesting. How fair is that? It's obvious that CMS does this for their own convenience, but wouldn't it be the decent thing to do to alert persons who are losing their jobs of that fact as soon as CMS has made a decision? An extra 4 to 5 weeks or so could make all the difference in a hunt for a new job. Why shouldn't everyone being cut be treated equally when it comes to notification? Just another example of the big hearted Gorman's overflowing kindness towards teachers. It's hard to believe that anyone would want to work for CMS, and I bet in a better economy many would not. Who can blame them? In a better economy CMS would have to beg for teachers, and may actually be forced to treat them well. If the economy picks up CMS may have such a shortage of teachers that the Teach for America factories will be forced to crank out warm bodies 24/7/365 just to keep up with the demand from CMS alone.
"We are going to lose good teachers"... but never fear, those 250 new TFA recruits will be hear all shiny and new and wet behind the ears with no training or desire to be a career teacher right on time to start the year!!!
*here.
The CMS budget timeline says teachers must be notified of intent not to renew their contracts by May 15, and actual nonrenewal by June 15. For administrators it's intent by May 1 and nonrenewal by June 1.
Please Ms. Doss and Mr. Frazier, could you please try to pin down Gorman to actually admit how many Teach For America teachers he is hiring? I think this would amaze most teachers and parents...Cut 600 teachers but then hire 250+ TFA kids.
Our city is only as good as our Education system. Gorman is impacting us all with his political agenda. One day he will move on and we will all be left with a generation that has grown up in over-sized classrooms, test taking strategies, and zero writing skills or love of education.
His agenda is Broad's agenda... and Gates...
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/2011/04/how-to-tell-if-your-school-district-is-infected-by-the-broad-virus/
Dear Teachers,
It is 7:12 AM, 3 minutes before the return to school after Spring Break. Just in case you had fun and you have come back relaxed, refreshed, and ready to tackle the remainder of the school year...but in case you forgot let me remind you 3 minutes before the start of your day on Monday morning that 600 of you aren't going to have a job in a month.
Pete
Dear Teachers,
It is 7:12 AM, 3 minutes before the return to school after Spring Break. Just in case you had fun and you have come back relaxed, refreshed, and ready to tackle the remainder of the school year... let me remind you 3 minutes before the start of your day on Monday morning that 600 of you aren't going to have a job in a month.
Pete
If you want to learn more about Broad visit CBS.Com and watch the segment that was on 60 Minutes last night. He and Pete seem to share the same ego. Broad loves to see his name on everything. He is known as Eli, "Strings Attached," Broad. They make a good point in the segment that says it is his money and you don't have to take it....you have to pay to play. However, the children of CMS aren't being given that chance in this "ego driven" experiment.
Yes, we are suffering from a "Broad Virus."
BTW - Does anyone know if Bill Gates' children go to public school?
I challenge the CO to avoid the temptation to PUBLISH in a searchable database or any other way the names of those being laid off... How about publishing a complete list of all the TFA recruits searchable database? Don't be a patsy to Gorman's ego CO... he LOVES this no matter what he says. Don't add insult to injury to these teachers... he isn't even trying to play at the idea they are poor performers this year... instead... because of years of saying such things, these people are all going to be "lumped"... Publish the TFA recruits currently employed by CMS... you'll 250 new names for next year! They already know who they are...
Dr. Gorman, By implementing 'Pay for performance' at this time, you are not only telling teachers to do more with less, you are demanding that they do just that-- lest they risk being in next years' stack of lay-offs.
Here is a follow-up from 7:12 PM above. If any of you are education research junkies, I have just finished a book called "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" by Diane Ravitch. She makes an interesting set of points with a lot of evidence that Eil Broad, Bill Gates, et al. are driving the direction of the American public education system not encumbered by laws, social policy, public input, etc.
BTW, I will plug the book because the author had quite a history I was already aware of. She was one of the architects of NCLB. She was formerly throughly convinced rigorous testing was needed to better determine deficencies of students so they could be addressed. She has become very disillusioned by what testing has become and how it has destroyed "true education". While I totally agree with her, she does not present how to deal with the trouble businesses were having with hiring high school graduates who could not read, write, carry on an intelligent conversation with fellow employees, customers, etc.
I am currently reading Seymore Sarrason's "The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990." This a fantastic read that describes when reform measures past and future will fail in America. Sarrason is the man when it comes to why reforms have failed and will. The answers are there but will not be found in blame, pay for performance, management by intimidation and other "new" management ideas. Real reform has to be teacher led and teacher driven in order to work. The Gormans of the world, the Broads, the Gates' and all these other reformers are failing and will fail. They hae missed the point once again.
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