Teachers hope $10B in bill will help keep jobs

August 7, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

MIAMI

Gretchen Marfisi was enjoying her summer, reading a book when the call came: The high school where she taught art would not be hiring her back in the fall.

Shocked, the art teacher with 27 years’ experience spent anxious weeks job searching, only to be rehired by the Broward County School District.

That was last year. This year, Marfisi went through the same routine — she was laid off earlier this summer, then called back Thursday.

“Why are they firing all of us?” Marfisi said, her voice ringing with frustration. “Besides giving us all more gray hair and wrinkles, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of logic involved.”

Teachers call it the “yo-yo effect.” School budgets, facing severe reductions in state funding, are cut, and layoffs are made, but then some or even all of the teachers are hired back over the summer as officials scramble for money.

This year, many teachers and other public employees are anxiously waiting to see if a pending $26 billion stimulus bill — which passed in the Senate this week — keeps them out of the unemployment line.

State and local governments cut 29,500 education jobs in July, bringing total cuts this year to 61,800. More layoffs are likely as states still face yawning budget gaps. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that states will have to close deficits totaling $120 billion in fiscal year 2012, which begins next July 1.

The $26 billion measure passed Thursday is less than was initially supported by Education Secretary Arne Duncan but will provide $16 billion to help states balance their Medicaid budgets and $10 billion for grants to school districts to forestall layoffs.

Republicans strenuously opposed the measure, denouncing it as yet another federal bailout the government cannot afford and calling it a giveaway to public-employee unions.

For educators across the country, it’s been a roller coaster of emotions as money to save thousands of jobs stalled in Congress, and unions and administrators sparred over ways to rehire laid-off teachers.

Dave Ebersbach lost his job as a math teacher this summer, and he spends each day hoping that his poverty-stricken school in Ohio will call up and offer him his position back.

“My biggest thing is I want to go back to the school I was at for the students,” said Ebersbach, 43, one of 14 math teachers in the Toledo school district to receive notice a few weeks ago that their jobs were cut.