If thepredicted economic downturn comes to fruition, many public schools will findtheir already stressed budgets squeezed even more. And, as a result, manyadministrators will head to the bargaining table to negotiate budget cuts withteachers’ unions.
So how dorecession-induced cuts affect students? Negatively, according to new researchfrom Michigan State University.
Katharine Strunk, professor of education policy at MSU, alongwith co-author Bradley Marianno from University of Las Vegas, Nevada, examinedhow contract negotiations panned out between unions and school districts inCalifornia during the Great Recession. What they found is that recessioninduced-budget cuts negatively impact student performance, particularly throughteacher turnover and reducing the number of teachers.
“When facedwith budget constraints, school districts and teachers’ unions may make changesat the bargaining table that are not in the best interest of students,” Strunksaid. “We found that unions and administrators negotiated increased classsizes, decreased the number of hours of instructional time for learning and madecuts to new teacher salaries.”
Cutting thesalaries of new teachers is a problem, Strunk said.
“Many districtsand schools around the country are already experiencing specific teacher shortages,so across-the-board salary cuts do not help retain new teachers or incentivizepeople to go into the profession, especially into already struggling districts,”she said.
Strunk andMarianno also found that teachers gained increased protection from whatdistrict administrators can ask of them. For example, in California, administratorscan’t ask teachers to attend extra professional development, and they have lessflexibility to address problems between teachers. These protections don’t affectthe districts’ bottom lines, but they can constrain administrators’ ability totackle educational problems.
“If we believe thatteachers’ unions and districts bargain in the best interest of their students,then we would hope to see cuts that do not affect the instructional core andpreserve student learning, like protecting class sizes and the school schedule.But that’s not what we found,” Strunk said. “As much as some people want toblame unions, we must remember that school districts sit at the other side ofthe bargaining table.”
So, what arethe lessons learned from negotiating teacher collective bargaining agreementsduring the Great Recession?
“With an impending recession and likely future budget cuts, contracts will need to be negotiated again,” Strunk said. “District administrators and unions should embark on these negotiations carefully and thoughtfully, working to keep the students’ best interests as the bottom line.”
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The paper was published in the AERA Open journal. (Note for media: Please include link to the original paper in coverage: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2332858419855089)
This story, written by Kim Ward, also appears on MSU Today.