Teachers groups angry over furloughs

By Alyse Knorr

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia teacher groups said Wednesday that furloughs announced Tuesday by Gov. Sonny Perdue Tuesday will be detrimental to students as well as the teachers.

Perdue announced 3 percent funding cuts for public schools Tuesday and recommended Georgia’s teachers take three unpaid furlough days to make those cuts.

The governor also ordered most state agencies to cut 5 percent from their budgets and asked other state employees to take three furlough days in an effort to deal with a $900 million shortfall and plummeting tax collections.

Teacher groups said the governor should look elsewhere for budget solutions.

“Balancing the budget on the backs of Georgia’s 128,000 teacher families and on our more than 1.6 million students is not the way to go,” Professional Association of Georgia Educators spokesman Tim Callahan said in a statement. “More effort should have been made to find other sources of either budget cuts or enhanced revenues.”

“They seem to do a lot of symbolic actions because it’s readily digestible by the public, as opposed to making more discreet cuts in the budget,” said Matthew Thompson, who teaches IB literature at South Forsyth High School. “There are so many ways you could take this money out, but this is a grand gesture.”

Georgia Association of Teachers President Jeff Hubbard said the reactions he’s heard from teachers have been a mixture of disappointment and anger.

“Just as soon as we’re celebrating what for a lot of systems was a successful year, you’re starting off the new year with a kick in the pants,” Hubbard said.

Susan Dietz, who teaches 10th grade language arts at Central Gwinnett High School, said she is appalled by the decision.

Dietz’s school district has not yet decided what to do about teacher furloughs.

“What I’m really afraid of is that it’s just the beginning,” Dietz said. “Once you open the floodgate, who knows what will happen?”

Hubbard said the governor’s orders would eliminate 60 percent of teachers’ planning time during fall semester and 2 percent of teacher income.

For a teacher making the state’s $33,424 base salary, that would mean about a $668 annual pay cut. For a teacher with 20 years of experience and basic certification making $45,033 according to the state’s salary schedule, that would mean a $900 annual pay cut.

Dietz, who has been teaching for 29 years, said furloughs would directly hurt her retirement plan, which is calculated based on her two highest salary years.

Hubbard said the furloughs are not just an economic concern for teachers, but a matter of being prepared for students.

“Economically, the employees are the losers, but more importantly, the students are the losers,” Hubbard said. “As we try to improve our educational system, this is the worst thing you can do.”

The furloughs will most likely cut pre-planning days teachers use to prepare for the beginning of the school year, a “crucial” time period when teachers prepare their classrooms, take professional development courses and review student records, Hubbard said.

“We have very few days to plan and grade anyway, and it seems to me that there is a misunderstanding of what’s involved in my profession that these days can simply go away,” Thompson said. “It takes a lot to plan for a whole year.”

Dietz said her classroom has been moved and that without planning days, she will not have time to set it up and unpack her supplies. She added that if she went to her school to set up the room on a day she was not contracted to work and had an accident, she might not be covered by worker’s compensation.

“I’m concerned as a professional that there seems to be a lack of understanding that we have a paced, high-risk, result-driven job and the days that are taken out are not days where we’re not doing something,” Thompson said. “Every day counts.”

Thompson compared a teacher losing three planning days to a CPA having three less days to prepare a client’s taxes for tax season.

Callahan said the furloughs will also lower morale at the critical beginning of the school year.

“The announcement, just as the school year is about to begin, could not come at a worse time,” Callahan said. “Not only will it be a terrific blow to teacher and student morale, it will undercut the normal ‘back to school’ enthusiasm of parents, teachers and students that gets most school years off to a positive start.”

Hubbard said the GAE is looking into legal options and waiting to hear if the governor has the right to order the furloughs himself.

In his press conference Tuesday, Perdue noted he was not sure if he had the legal authority to order teachers to take unpaid days, as teachers work under contracts with individual school districts, not the state.

Currently, each local superintendent and school board will have to make decisions on what to do, Hubbard said. The state’s 3 percent budget cut amounts to three unpaid furlough days, but school systems can choose to furlough their teachers or find other ways to make the cuts.

--The Associated Press contributed to this report.