80% of School Districts Lay Off Teachers: How You Can Help

Filed under: News, Lynnette Khalfani-Cox

Here's a frightening statistic just in time for the back-to-school season: 80% of school districts in America laid off teachers this academic year. The cuts are mainly tied to funding woes at public schools nationwide.

It's a tragedy, of course, that so many educators -- even top-rated ones ones -- are getting the axe. But it's even more of a tragedy that our youth won't be getting, in many cases, the solid education they need via experienced teachers. In addition to staff reductions, schools across the country are slashing programs and extra-curricular activities, asking parents to contribute more to classroom supplies, and increasing class sizes.


And when you start to get 35 or 40 elementary, middle school or high school students in a single classroom, it's almost inevitable that instruction quality will decline, as teachers are forced to "teach to the middle" and not offer as much specialized guidance and attention to individual students, as is done when there are smaller classroom sizes.

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I'm certainly grateful for the relatively small class sizes my three children currently have in their public schools. In fact, I thought it was pretty good when my youngest, who just entered pre-kindergarten, wound up in a class of just 15 students. Then other parents seemed aghast. "Oh my!" one mom exclaimed when I told her there were 15 pupils enrolled. "The pre-k class last year had just seven students," she said.

Our town happens to be the top-ranked school district in the state of New Jersey. I can only imagine what economic pressures are doing to less fortunate areas.

That's why we should all be extra vigilant to make sure we give our children the very best educational opportunities available. Hard-working educators deserve our support too. So even though we all hate to pay higher taxes, and some of us balk at chipping in a little extra when those requests for money come home from school, at the very least just give a heart-felt "thank you" to a teacher you know is doing a great job with kids. Those teachers -- and our youth -- deserve no less.

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Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, an award-winning financial news journalist and former Wall Street Journal reporter for CNBC, has been featured in the Washington Post, USA Today, and the New York Times, as well as magazines ranging from Essence and Redbook to Black Enterprise and Smart Money. Check out her New York Times best seller 'Zero Debt: The Ultimate Guide to Financial Freedom.'

 

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