October’s staffing adjustments resulted in Garfield High School losing one teacher and having some schedules shuffled after the district determined it needed to take away two full time positions from the school. This adjustment happened as a result of a discrepancy between estimated enrollment and actual enrollment. Leading up to the official announcement from Garfield administration, there were rumors swirling around the school about processes and results of the decrease in staffing, making it hard to understand the changes.
The decision to take away teaching positions comes from the Seattle Public School district, who determine if and how many teachers need to be shuffled over to different schools, either to comply with minimum staffing requirements set by the state or to save money by reducing (the district’s definition of) overstaffing. Garfield can create proposals about where and how they will cut positions, though the district often does not approve them, and typically a school has to send multiple proposals to the district before approval.
“Schools have to predict their student count the summer before, then we get tons of emails as teachers at the beginning of the year [saying] ‘take attendance, take attendance, take attendance carefully’ because you have to account for students carefully every week of September,” Marc Lovre, an English teacher at Garfield said. “Then October first is when whatever your student count is, the state requires it be used for staffing.”
Garfield was able to save one full time teaching position from leaving the school in its plan, which was ultimately accepted by the district, through a few tricks the administration had up its sleeve. 60% of full time position funding was pulled from an administrative position that was paid for through the discretionary fund, avoiding more impact on students.
According to Mary Hopkins, head of the Multilingual Department (English language learners program) Garfield teachers also voted in favor of a waiver allowing a teacher to work in between the MLL department and the general education department keeping more teachers in other departments from being reallocated. The maneuver, bringing a teacher partially into MLL accounted for the remaining 40% of the 1 full time position that needed to be taken out from the general education departments. That keeps the teacher in the building. Bringing a teacher into MLL was enabled by a position in the MLL department being left empty after a member of the department left Garfield. This may seem like a winning play but one teacher is still leaving Garfield and many students will still have their schedules shuffled.
October staffing readjustments, while common and statewide policy, are a very big source of contention. The advocacy group All Together for Seattle Schools formed in response to a lack of information about them. In the Garfield community, this year particularly, there are concerns about this shuffle happening after a year filled with shootings and trauma. The administration has previously said that safety concerns may be a factor in the discrepancy between projections and actual enrollment. However, there is no data available that can concretely prove what caused the discrepancy, so there can only be speculation right now.
