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Interesting how people who choose private school blame their choice not on their own opportunity hoarding but the BoE, presumably because the BoE failed to support policies that would further enable opportunity hoarding in public schools.
Several years ago the district sent out mass layoff notices. SE side schools were disproportionately impacted (SE staff have less seniority overall). One westside school was hit hard too.
This school had been recently renamed and after several years of low enrollment (leading to staff reductions) it had become popular (leading to staff increases). So it had an unusually low seniority staff.
A parent representative from this school came to a union meeting shortly after the notices went out to advocate not for fewer layoffs overall but for union approval of some kind of plan to rescind their school's layoff notices.
The representative suggested families would be willing to pay some of the salaries - but only if their current teachers got the positions. Or perhaps the school could just not have any layoffs? Would the union be willing to overlook seniority for this one school, just this once?
At the time I taught at a SE side school where two thirds of the classroom staff had been sent a layoff notice. This was the case at many SE schools. If the layoffs went through, these positions would be hard to fill and the schools would begin the next year short-staffed.
Schools serving marginalized populations need stable staff who choose to be there. Short staffing and turnover kill institutional memory, short-circuit relationships, and put whatever veteran staff remain under increased stress.
None of this mattered to the parents at the westside school. I'm sure they considered themselves progressive - I mean, they chose public school!
When things got tough their progressive principles turned into opportunity hoarding. Not to mention a sense of entitlement so strong they thought a union might destroy itself to please them.
In the end, the layoffs didn't get finalized. But I think about this when parents call into BoE meetings to threaten to leave if they don't get their way or demand recalls when their desires aren't centered.
