The Math of City Job School Cuts
The Pittsburgh Public Schools’ board of directors just voted on another round of job cuts (furloughs and layoffs) adding on to the ones last month in order to deal with financial shortfalls and declining enrollment. We documented recent tax and expenditure details of the District last November and warned of tough times to come.
As of the 2009 audited financial statement, the District’s job headcount included 2,315 teachers and 2,570 non-teachers. The latter group includes everyone in administration, instruction employees not identified as teachers, pupil affairs, health, operations and maintenance, and food service. As of that year the ratio of non-teachers to teachers was 1.1/1.
Last month’s job cuts of 147 people was concentrated in the central office, and this month’s reduction of people identified as paraprofessionals (13), family support (4), non-professional (2), behavior intervention (6), career/technical (1), and early childhood coordinators (2) drops the non-teacher count from its 2009 total of 2,570 to 2,395.
Yesterday’s job cuts also affected 23 teachers, and that drops the teacher count to 2,292. That drops the non-teacher to teacher ratio to 1.04/1. Depending on how cuts affecting eight part-time teachers figure into the headcount, the ratio might bump slightly upward in favor of non-teachers.