Three years ago, in the midst of cutbacks in the Pittsburgh Public School District, there was a bit of a groundswell of support for making furlough decisions on something other than seniority. Community organizations rallied in favor and the leaders of prominent foundations in the City wrote an opinion piece in support, but the teachers union would not negotiate the issue of seniority.
So now that the House Education Committee has voted for using performance primarily in school furloughs rather than seniority (the second time in the last two years), how will the proposal be treated three years later? A state law change would likely mandate that school contracts could not include language that utilized seniority as the mechanism to determine who is let go when cuts are made.
