April 18, 2024 – Senior Policy Advocate Angie Salazar responds to an EdSource article by Diana Lambert regarding teacher layoffs across the state. Angie who focuses on statewide advocacy to grow a diverse, well-prepared educator workforce, especially for low-income Black, Indigenous, Latine, and most impacted students of color and multilingual learners commented:
“Schools are places where students and educators learn and build community year after year. This sense of connection and security felt by members of a school community is disrupted every time an educator departs for any reason. People you counted on are suddenly gone. We can see the numbers of missing teachers in the state’s new educator data system – Teaching Assignment Monitoring Outcomes – by examining data on vacancies and unlawful assignments.
Unnecessarily sending out large numbers of pink slips creates more of a downward spiral, threatens the sense of security, and fuels feelings of loss, anxiety, and chaos. These disruptions are completely preventable when districts prioritize their existing funding to protect their number one resource: educators. Districts are certainly challenged by the loss of pandemic era funding, but refusing to look for alternatives to layoffs results in fractured learning and communities. Repairing the fabric is much harder than protecting it.”
