When the Los Angeles Unified School District laid off thousands of teachers last spring, the school where I teach, Markham Middle School in Watts, was decimated. Already one of the lowest performing in the state, Markham lost more than half its teachers. The number was so high because inner-city schools like ours tend to have a disproportionate share of teachers just starting their careers, and in last year's layoffs, the most recently hired were the first to receive pink slips. But at Markham, many of those teachers were extremely dedicated and hoped to build a career at the school.
Because experienced teachers from throughout the district weren't lining up to transfer here, the school was left scrambling to staff classes. Today, months into the school year, many students are still without permanent teachers. Some teachers who received layoff notices agreed to stay on as long-term substitutes, working without the benefits we'd received the previous year.
I was one of them until January, when I was rehired by the district as a full-time teacher.
Currently, more than 20% of Markham's teaching staff consists of long-term substitutes, and as late as December, we still had six vacant classrooms where students were taught by a constantly rotating parade of substitutes. This kind of instability would be difficult at any school. But at a school like ours, where many students are desperately poor and often have language difficulties as well, it has been catastrophic.
In general, I think that decisions about a child's education should be made in the classroom, not the courtroom. But like a lot of other Markham teachers, I applaud the lawsuit filed last week by a coalition of civil rights attorneys to defend California's most neglected children by seeking to stop the layoffs at three inner-city middle schools.