Enrollment drop will leave 100s of Denver teachers jobless

Originally posted on Chalkbeat by Melanie Asmar on February 29, 2016

Nearly 500 Denver school staff members, most of them teachers, have been told their positions will be eliminated or reduced to part-time next year because of declining enrollment and other factors.

The staff members were informed this month they would be impacted by an annual Denver Public Schools shedding of positions known as “reductions in building,” or RIBs. Those with “non-probationary” status — essentially, those with tenure — have 18 months to find another job before the district stops paying them. Those who lack that standing have only until their current contracts expire.

The numbers of staff reductions — which are also driven by school closures, turnarounds, program changes and more — fluctuate greatly from year to year. This year’s 488 cuts are considerably greater than last year’s, but well short of other years.

While DPS has been one of the fastest-growing urban districts in the country, officials expect that growth to slow down. The majority of this year’s cuts are due to decreasing enrollment at specific schools, district officials said.

Several factors are to blame, officials said, including a drop in birth rates during the recession, which is causing kindergarten enrollment to decline.

Gentrification also plays a part: While some Denver neighborhoods are bursting with children due to the construction of new single-family homes, others are experiencing the opposite. As housing prices in gentrifying neighborhoods rise, lower income families are being pushed out and school enrollment is suffering.

The district, which is still the largest in the state, serves about 85,250 students in kindergarten through twelfth grade this year. Next year, DPS officials predict that number will increase 1 percent to 86,250. But the number of students in certain neighborhoods — including near northeast Denver and southwest Denver — is expected to decrease.

When schools lose children, they also lose revenue. The state pays school districts a fixed amount of money per student; this year, it’s about $7,600. DPS passes along a portion of that money to the schools based on the number of students each school has.

The schools must then decide how to spend it. If DPS planning officials predict a school will have fewer students next year, the school has to figure out what — or who — to cut.

“Ultimately, the principal is the decisionmaker on what the staffing model needs to be,” said Sarah Marks, the district’s executive director of strategic school support. “But in almost every case, this is a process that’s reached — and decisions are made — through consensus.”

A committee of parents, teachers, administrators and community members is part of that process, Marks said. If a principal ultimately decides the school needs to cut a third-grade teacher, for example, a separate committee of teachers and administrators interviews all of the school’s third-grade teachers to determine which one of them should go.

But Pam Shamburg, executive director of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, said the union has heard concerns that the process doesn’t always work the way it should. Teachers complain of a lack of transparency when it comes to money and staffing decisions.

“No one ever has a true picture of what the true story is,” she said.

The teachers, librarians, assistant principals and facilitators who lost all or part of their positions were informed on Feb. 17. In all, the cuts occurred in 110 DPS schools. (Teachers at the district’s 58 charter schools are not DPS employees and are not subject to the process.) An additional 20 DPS teachers lost their positions this past fall.

More than half of the 488 cuts and reductions are attributed to a loss in enrollment, according to a spreadsheet provided by the district.

But dropping enrollment isn’t the only reason a position can be cut. Teachers can also lose their positions if a school is closed or “turned around,” which often involves hiring a new staff in an effort to boost performance.

If a school changes its program by becoming dual-language, for instance, teachers without that qualification could lose their jobs. And teachers in one-year positions, such as those filling in for others on maternity leave, are also included in the overall number.

About one-fifth of the 488 cuts are attributed to school closures and turnarounds, including the elimination of 15 teaching positions at Barrett Elementary in northeast Denver, which is being closed next year due to low enrollment and consolidated with nearby Columbine Elementary.

Teachers who lost their positions must now find new jobs. The district expects to post more than 1,600 teaching jobs for this coming fall, including at schools that are growing. Marks said it’s likely that most of the affected teachers will land one.

“Our focus right now is helping teachers find opportunities and new positions,” she said.

The district gives affected teachers first crack at DPS job fairs, though Shamburg said it doesn’t often give them a true advantage. If a non-probationary teacher can’t find a new job by the fall, the district will place him or her in a paid position for a year while he or she continues to search.

And if such a teacher hasn’t found a job by the end of that year, he or she will be put on unpaid leave. In January 2014, the teachers union challenged that practice in court. The lawsuit is ongoing.

DPS recently announced that it will cut 157 central-office jobs next year because of state budget constraints and citywide gentrification, which is reducing the amount of extra state money the district receives to educate kids living in poverty. The cuts to the central office are separate from the cuts at individual schools, Marks said, though both are due to tightening school funding.

Correction: A previous version of this story stated that teachers whose positions were cut have 18 months to find a new job before the district stops paying them. That provision only applies to “non-probationary” teachers.

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