The City of Providence, Rhode Island has given pink slips to all city teachers this week in anticipation of massive layoffs (necessitating contract changes) for the coming school year. Rhode Island law requires that teachers be notified of potential changes in their positions by March 1. Superintendent Tom Brady (yes, that is his name; he's also a Broad Academy graduate, for those keeping track) says it was necessary to close a projected $40 million budget gap for FY12.
UPDATE: And yes, Providence did attend the Union-Management Collaboration Jamboree in Denver last week.
You would think that while they were at Arne Duncan's lovefest and singing kumbaya that the Administration could have given the Union President a heads up on what they were doing. Looks like they issued pink slips because they have a March 1st deadline to do so, but not enough time to figure out who will get the actual axe.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that they went to Denver to profess collaboration and then came home and did this (without any warning) does cast rather a pall on the Jamboree.
ReplyDeleteI don't know enough about the Providence school system to know what proportion of the budget $40 million is, but, as Providence is about the same size as Worcester, it has to be close to a tenth. I'll do some poking around later and see if I can get a handle on that.