House bill would allow non-seniority teacher layoffs

School districts in Pennsylvania are barred by law from laying off teachers in most cases, and when furloughs do occur, they must be by seniority.

A bill introduced this month in the state House would change that.

The legislation would, for the first time in decades, allow teachers and other school professionals to be laid off to help close budget shortfalls. Now, layoffs can be triggered only by declining enrollment, school closings, or changes in academic programs.

Districts also would have to decide who stays and who goes based on teacher certifications and job performance, including how well students did on state tests.

The proposal comes as districts in dozens of states, including Pennsylvania, are scrambling to balance budgets. And it comes as seniority rights for teachers around the country are under challenge from politicians who say those rights hurt children's education.

This week, Gov. Corbett joined their number. He said that unless school districts can lay off teachers for economic reasons, "it puts the entire enterprise of public education at risk." And he called for "using measures of teacher quality and effectiveness" instead of seniority in layoffs.

The state's two largest teachers' unions, which between them represent almost all teachers, oppose scrapping seniority, saying it could lead to arbitrary layoffs, not ones based on teacher performance. "There is no objective criteria to make decisions," said Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry T. Jordan. "It opens up the opportunity for a lot of favoritism."

Nationwide, 13 other states, including New Jersey, have laws saying that seniority governs when laying off teachers. Efforts to change those laws are under way in several states, including New Jersey and New York.

Colorado and Oklahoma use teacher performance as a factor in deciding who gets laid off. Arizona forbids the use of seniority as the decider; Idaho passed similar legislation this week. Other states leave it up to school districts or do not specify a single method for determining layoffs.

The Pennsylvania bill's primary sponsor, Rep. Scott W. Boyd (R., Lancaster), said he introduced it because "we need to give school districts the tools to meet the challenge in the most efficient way and in a way that preserves educational programs." Teacher performance should govern layoffs, he said, because "I want to provide tools for the local districts that . . . accentuate keeping the best educators."

Seniority provisions in current teachers' contracts would not be scuttled by the proposed legislation, Boyd said, but the changes would take effect when existing contracts expire.

State law already permits districts to lay off nonprofessionals, such as aides or cafeteria staff.

Several area school board members embraced the proposal. Ritchie Webb - the board president in Bucks County's Neshaminy district, which is facing a deficit of more than $9 million and a protracted contract standoff with its teachers' union - said, "Our tax base has gone down, as has our ability to raise taxes. This would be an important tool." With seniority-based layoffs, "there may be a teacher who never has taught in a position but could keep the job just because they have the time, rather than a young and energetic teacher who is more qualified," he said.

Delaware County's Radnor School District laid off more than a dozen teachers last year due to program changes. School Board President Patricia Booker said that "we had to furlough teachers that . . . we thought highly of. It certainly would have been better to conduct layoffs based on performance."

Still, using performance-based layoffs, she said, would be "a very lengthy and difficult process. . . . We would have to give a lot of thought to its execution."

Alan Mezger, a Radnor High social studies teacher and union spokesman, said seniority protects teachers who might have "a personal issue" with an administrator.

"The greatest fear is that they would target teachers because of their high salary, not their performance," he said. "We hope that ethically, they would never do that, but it would be difficult for us to place that much trust in them."

Jackie Anderson, a chemistry teacher and union president in Montgomery County's Hatboro-Horsham district, where performance-based merit pay has been an issue in contract negotiations, said: "I haven't seen a system that truly, accurately evaluates teachers, and I've looked. I just don't see a fair way to do it" other than seniority.

Boyd's legislation - House Bill 855 - is supported by the House Republican leadership, said State Rep. Paul Clymer (R., Bucks), chairman of the House Education Committee, which still has not voted on it.

Clymer said he has not talked to Corbett about the bill. Corbett spokeswoman Janet Kelley did not say whether the governor supported Boyd's bill, but did say in an e-mail that he "strongly supports efforts to pass legislation providing school districts the flexibility to furlough staff for economic reasons."

State Sen. Jeffrey Piccola (R., Dauphin), chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said he backed the idea.

State Rep. James R. Roebuck (D., Phila.), the House minority education chairman, said he opposed the bill as it wa written. "There might be reason to lay off teachers, but to take away seniority rights adds additional injury," he said.

W. Gerard Oleksiak, treasurer of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, said at a House hearing that seniority "provides a stable and objective means to carry out a difficult task. . . . It should not be replaced with what could become a capricious, subjective, and arbitrary system of using furloughs to remove teachers from the classroom."

He added that the union was willing to work with the legislature "in this tough economic time."

Boyd said that he was open to suggestions. "This is not a perfect fix, but we just can't sit on our hands and do nothing," he added.

Asked about concerns that school administrators might play favorites and not lay off by teacher ability, he said: "When they have to consider providing a quality education, why would they not want to keep their best teachers?"

Asked about the temptation to furlough good but high-paid teachers to save money, he said: "If they take out some of their best teachers just to save a few bucks, then shame on them. It shouldn't happen."