Happens all the time in the real world, but educators seem [to think they are] immune from such abrupt changes in their workplace. Tenure certainly bolsters that assertion making it nigh on impossible for any administration to improve the organization by upgrading positions and personnel. Some educators display incredible entitlement demanding raises, perqs and benefits as if money will always be at hand regardless of spending.
The real world sometimes encounters the "unfireable" employee who is perhaps a member of a protected class and is as litigious as they are incompetent. One option is to shuffle them off into a nice office working on assignments where they can do the least damage. Another practice is to de-hire them by offering the kinds of assignments, accommodations and opportunities that encourages them to offer their inestimable talents to the greater business community far beyond their current position. They quit.
As has been duly noted, teachers are always threatening to quit. Often with an individual claiming to speak for the crowd asserting mass resignations. In the before times administrations and parents considered this a Bad Thing and generally caved to the teachers' demands.
That was then.
Now we have a pandemic. Classes are effectively cancelled and parents are forced to homeschool children with the bare minimum of support from the school system. The delta between what is being touted by educators as "virtual learning" and full-on, turn your back on the district, homeschooling is diminishingly small and painfully obvious and will lead to reduced enrollment. This new, lower enrollment level will negatively impact funding. Quickly. Given DeKalb is already well over the legal millage rate demanding more property tax may be difficult. Costs will be cut. Heads must roll.
There are approximately 15,500 employees in DCSD of which about 6,600 are teachers. If one considers teachers to be the real worker bees, there are lots of hangers-on, basically half-again as many as there are teachers. But the fact is the primary purpose of public schools is not teaching and learning and it hasn't been for some time. It is about a "safe place" (to learn...). It is about fending off hunger and food insecurity. It is about a lot of things, none in the original charter but all driving up headcount. The damage includes a teaching workforce that, having realized there ain't no teachin' goin' on 'round here, have basically given up. On the job, not the paycheck. They may have retired on the job, but why take the pay cut of actually retiring?
Significant dead weight could be carried in the before times, but in these days of assessment there will be a necessary accounting. There will be jobs lost. And let's be honest, there is no rolling back of the social support activities taken on by public schools. There is too much money at stake for "work" that has no objective metrics, no accountability. It is free money. So there will be teachers out of work. Maybe some of the more demanding souls should consider that a pandemic is a wonderful lever to pry them loose and a forced return to the schoolhouse is the fulcrum. Maybe that will give the administration the tool they need to rightsize and upgrade the teaching corp.
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