Pink-Slipped
By Sasha Abramsky
Posted on April 17
Posted on April 17
Area teachers are feeling the sting of budget cuts and layoffs. We take an in-depth look at those on the front lines.
This is the story of a system in crisis, of what Sacramento City Unified School District Superintendent Jonathan Raymond terms “the continual corrosive effect on morale” of cuts, and of the collateral damage—to teachers, to students and to the broader community—when there isn’t enough money to pay all of the city’s education bills. It is a story about priorities and about what happens when our commitment to providing all children with the best possible education wavers. “It has an effect on the culture and climate of the school and the classroom,” Raymond says. “It’s not good for California, not good for learning in our state.”
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICAH ALBERTStephanie Kuroda, a 33-year-old elementary school teacher in the Sacramento City Unified School District, received her first preliminary pink slip in the spring of 2008—a formal notice that she had no guarantee of a job come fall. After several months of uncertainty, she finished the school year and said goodbye to her students, not knowing if she would teach again. She cleared out her classroom, put her teaching materials into storage . . . and then, at the very last minute, on the eve of the new school year, she received a call to return to work.
It happened again in 2009 and once more in 2010.
California budgets had been overstretched for years prior to the onset of the Great Recession. In fact, from 2006, the state had been slashing services, including funds for schools, in a vain attempt to bring the budget into balance. Then, as the state’s fiscal woes worsened in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse—when the housing market’s implosion triggered bank failures, which in turn generated huge levels of unemployment, which then reduced government tax revenues—the scale of the crisis got worse and the cuts picked up steam.
Similar stories to Kuroda’s played out, with increasing frequency, throughout Sacramento area school districts. Preliminary pink slips were issued every March because the budget amounts available for the following school year were up in the air. Some pink slips would be
It happened again in 2009 and once more in 2010.
California budgets had been overstretched for years prior to the onset of the Great Recession. In fact, from 2006, the state had been slashing services, including funds for schools, in a vain attempt to bring the budget into balance. Then, as the state’s fiscal woes worsened in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse—when the housing market’s implosion triggered bank failures, which in turn generated huge levels of unemployment, which then reduced government tax revenues—the scale of the crisis got worse and the cuts picked up steam.
Similar stories to Kuroda’s played out, with increasing frequency, throughout Sacramento area school districts. Preliminary pink slips were issued every March because the budget amounts available for the following school year were up in the air. Some pink slips would be