Like others across the country, I too spent time over Spring Break thinking about how school districts are approaching the need for budget reductions. In AISD, we may face the challenge of having to reduce our budget by as much as $100 million over the next two years. Two newspaper articles caught my attention: one, in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, was encouraging, and the other, in the March 21 Austin American-Statesman, was disappointing.
The Wall Street Journal article, "Voters Weigh in on Layoff Issue [7]," reported that New York City voters overwhelmingly believe teacher layoffs should be based on job performance rather than seniority, according to a poll released Friday. The survey from the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute "showed that voters, by a margin of 78% to 16%, want the city to lay off teachers based on merit. Even in a household with a union member, 63% support merit-based layoffs."
In AISD, our policy allows us to consider teacher performance before seniority in determining the positions to be eliminated as part of a reduction in force. In this difficult process of staff reductions, I continue to support the approach that my administration has taken, and I believe most Austinites, like New Yorkers, are supportive of our efforts to focus on teacher effectiveness and student outcomes.
That’s why I was disappointed and surprised by the editorial in yesterday’s Austin American-Statesman: "Chief Botches Incentive Plan [8]." The editorial said that I did not seek voluntary methods, such as incentives, to address the budget shortfall before proposing a Reduction in Force.
For more than a year, I have responded to inquiries from Trustees ranging from whether the district could buy early retirement credits through the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS) to early exit incentives. However, the issue has never been scheduled for a Board discussion, primarily because the guidance that we have received, last year and this, has indicated that early retirement buyouts and exit incentives would be costly, subject to legal challenges, and not the best way to retain our best teachers.
As school districts throughout the state have grappled with significant budget reductions over the past two months, a variety of questions about reducing personnel costs have arisen. Last month, in response to these questions, the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) Director of Legal Services provided its member districts with guidance on offering exit incentives. TASB counseled that “even employees who take advantage of a voluntary severance package may be entitled to unemployment benefits, and these benefits will be paid over and above the amount of any severance. The district may NOT ask an employee to waive the right to unemployment benefits; to do so is a criminal offense.” Further, Texas law "prohibits districts from offering or providing financial or other incentives to retire from TRS."
"Finally," TASB pointed out, "be aware that, in practice, incentive payments tend to benefit the best employees, who can quickly find work elsewhere, the worst employees, who were likely to be fired anyway, and employees who were already planning to quit."
Here’s the bottom line: with this guidance, my Administration concluded, and recommended to the Board, that the benefits of offering any incentive package did not outweigh the risks and, most importantly, was not the best use of taxpayer dollars.
Our budget development process has been thoughtful, collaborative and deliberate, even in the face of an extremely challenging financial landscape, the likes of which Texas school districts have not seen since the Second World War.
Please click on the link below to read my entire blog post entitled "Straight Talk on Early Exit Incentives" [9].