Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/29842
Lissette Averhoff, Oakland Unified: Even cancer couldn’t stop her dedication to her fifth-grade students. But seeing the stark layoff notice — one of 540 issued to Oakland Unified teachers — made her pause. “It was hard because it’s such an impersonal letter,” Lissette Averhoff says. The letter makes no mention of her hard work. Di- agnosed with breast cancer in March 2009, she scheduled her surgery during that summer to avoid missing the students she inspires and nurtures. Having to leave early some days for chemotherapy and radiation treatments, she would come in on Saturdays to make up time. If she loses her job, her students will lose a bilingual role model with 12 years of overall teaching experience (the past five in the district) and a mentor who takes students on weekend field trips and cares enough to start a special group to help students worried about the transition to middle school. Students and parents are taken aback by the pink slip. “The parents are outraged” and agree with her that the district must find a way to save teachers’ jobs, she says. Her students are so proud of her that when a reporter from the Oakland Tribune was on campus for an unrelated story, Averhoff ’s students stopped the re- porter and advised her that Averhoff ’s pink slip is the real news. Jason Allen, Elk Grove Unified: Coming from a family of educators, Jason Allen is passionate about teaching and thought he could stay working in the classroom as a permanent career. Not any more, not after being pink-slipped five of his eight years in Elk Grove Unified, which issued layoff notices to more than 800 educators this year. “I always had this vision that I would be able to teach forever,” he says. “Now I can’t assume I’ll be a teacher next year.” His third-grade students at James McKee Elementary are worried they will lose him. “A lot of my students, sadly, are aware of the tight budgets. They are asking me if I’m going to be coming back.” Monica and Rigoberto Iñiguez, Los Angeles Unified: They just bought their first house together after years of scrimping and saving. Now they are two of the 4,500 educators who received pink slips in Los Angeles Unified as the nation’s second-largest school district grapples with a staggering $408 million deficit. And they are nervous. It was the third time for Monica, a fourth-grade teacher at Noble Elementary, where about half the educators in the heavily Latino North Hills neighborhood got layoff notices. But it was the first pink slip for her husband Rigoberto, a PE teacher at nearby Vista Middle School. “We just closed escrow on our house,” Monica says. “We’ve been saving for many years. It’s been very stressful for us.” The couple’s plight made national news in a March 31 Education Week story about how the “pink slip purgatory” has made teachers frustrated and fearful across the country, deeply affecting faculty morale. The couple is thinking about their son, 3, and 8-month-old daugh- ter, and about missing their students at their respective schools. Adrienne Fraire, Alvord Unified, Riverside: “It is my dream to teach,” she says with quiet enthusiasm. “And I am going to keep fighting for this job.” If she loses the fight, her students at Loma Vista Middle School will have lost a veteran who makes a difference. She is one of about 40 district teachers to get a pink slip this spring, despite having nine years of teaching experience, the last five in the district. Her impact is well- known. During her time at the district’s Norte Vista High School, where she taught AP government and the yearbook class, and led a program that took low-income students on trips to Europe, the students voted her teacher of the year. She holds a master’s in education technology in the classroom and is bilingual. Yet this is the third year in a row she has been hit with a pink slip — which comes as she also copes with a divorce. Two of her three children are still at home, so the financial uncertainties are difficult to handle right now. “It cuts into your motivation at school,” she says. “It saps you. You don’t know if you’re going to have a job or not.” Juliet dela Paz, San Diego Unified: Her work day as a school nurse can include dialing 911 to save a student’s life, or helping students through seizures and worse. As California’s public school nurses continue to be laid off at alarming rates, she has treasured her rare status of being assigned to one San Diego neighborhood elementary school to care for students. A Registered Credentialed School Nurse assigned to Field Elementary in the Claremont Mesa neighborhood, Juliet dela Paz used to cover four schools in San Diego Unified, but now has 270 students who depend on her skills, of which 20 are medically/physically challenged. She has a bond with all students and families that’s profound. “I am honored to be their nurse. The relationships I have with the families are everything to me.” The district angered educators this spring by issuing more than 1,300 pink slips for educators, which could reduce the nursing staff by about a third, from 160 to about 110. The dis- trict’s ratio of nurses to students would drop from about one nurse for 825 students to 1:1,200. “My concern is that these ratios will be unsafe.” The district is the state’s second-largest with about 132,000 students. She notes that California’s ratio of nurses to students ranks 42nd in the nation at 1:2,187, according to the National Association of School Nurses, which recommends a school district ratio of 1:750 for safety reasons. Dela Paz hopes to still have her job when she receives her master of science in nursing on May 20 at San Diego State University. APRIL 2011 | www.cta.org 23