After laying off over 150 teachers and staff in May — 21 from Ballard — Seattle Public Schools has announced that it’s giving 57 of those teachers their jobs back. “As we had hoped, increased enrollment, recent clarity from the state about stimulus funding and savings from the hiring freeze implemented last December combine to give the district the flexibility to restore approximately 35.6 per cent of the teaching positions,” said Superintendent Maria L. Goodloe-Johnson. Seattle Public Schools says in “most cases,” the teachers will return to the same positions. We’ve asked how many of these teachers are headed back to Ballard, and we’ll let you know as soon as we hear back.
Seattle Public Schools to recall 57 teachers
wonderbar!
Depends who the teachers are! While there are some great teachers there are also just as many (or more) mediocre or even incompetent teachers who should be fired. Teachers whose attitude is “I've got tenure so I don't care”. What bothers me is there doesn't seem to be any real performance standards for teachers (or any other government jobs for that matter) which allows the mediocre and incompetent to skate by on seniority.
I agree with SeaSpider. The “last to fire, first to re-hire” based on seniority is a bad model. I know plenty of bad teachers that are just hanging around cashing the checks until retirement. And believe me, don't assume private school teachers don't check out with seniority – they can be worse. If parents saw the behavior and teaching that some private school teachers exhibited they would be shocked.