Besides grading papers after school, Patty Galiotos, a reading teacher at Abbott Middle School in Elgin, now is confronted with a new after-hours task: Finding a job.
Galiotos is one of about 1,000 teachers in Elgin-based District U-46 who received pink slips in recent weeks, as the deficit-ridden district must cut costs. The teachers will finish the school year, and as many as half could be rehired for the fall. But as a newer teacher, Galiotos isn’t banking on getting her job back.
Like most public servants, Galiotos didn’t go into teaching to get rich, but the prospect of tenure was a plus. “I love working with children. I love books and literature,” she said. “But of course, there’s also job security in teaching.”
Or at least there has been until recently. Increasingly as states and municipalities throughout the nation face budget shortfalls from reduced tax receipts in a down economy, the job security that traditionally has been part of the package for public-sector employees is no longer a sure thing.
The situation could cost 150,000 state and local workers their jobs, suggests Adrian Moore, executive director of the Reason Public Policy Institute in Los Angeles. And the problem may well get worse before it gets better. Nationwide, states face budget shortfalls of more than $80 billion in fiscal 2004, according to survey data from the National Governors Association in Washington. And states still have about $30 billion in shortfalls for the current fiscal year.
Increasingly, layoffs are part of the remedy. According to a November report by the National Association of State Budget Officers, 15 states laid off workers in fiscal 2002 and 10 states laid off workers in fiscal 2003, a strategy that was rare before 2001. Now, some experts suggest the November figures already are too low, as a growing number of states have recently announced job cutbacks.
The cutbacks are coming after a period in the ’90s of steady job growth in the public sector, giving rise to some criticism that states may have over-expanded when the money was rolling in from higher capital gains and corporate tax receipts, Moore says. “During the great stock market boom, many states went on hiring sprees,” he said.
The number of state and local government workers nationwide climbed 10.5 percent to 15.38 million in 2001 from 13.91 million in 1994, according to the Census Bureau, while the nation’s population grew 8.1 percent during the same period. In Illinois, state and local employment rose 7.7 percent from 575,826 in 1994 to 620,353 in 2000, but then dipped 0.7 percent in 2001, bucking the national trend.
Moore says the problem is cyclical, with public sector layoffs often following periods of heavy economic growth. “Whenever the economy drops, a year or two later, we always see some layoffs,” generally ranging from 3 percent to 5 percent of the state and municipal workforce. But Moore says the situation today looks far bleaker. “This is looking more like a 10 percenter,” he said. “If you’re a relatively new employee, you’re more vulnerable.”
In Illinois, where the government is facing a $5 billion deficit, Gov. Rod Blagojevich is focusing on hiring freezes and eliminating unfilled jobs to avoid massive layoffs, according to press secretary Tom Schafer. “He put in place a hiring freeze the first day he took office. He did order a 10 percent reduction in administrative cuts in agencies under his control with the only exemption being (kindergarten) through 12 education,” Schafer said.
While Blagojevich has pledged not to push the state’s problems on to local municipalities, a growing number of states do plan to reduce local aid. Eight states used this strategy in fiscal 2002, and 12 are using it in fiscal 2003, according to the budget officers’ November Fiscal Survey of States.
Meantime, some Illinois school boards and municipalities find themselves with no choice but layoffs. With a cap on property taxes, schools in particular are hard hit, as they face growing enrollments, higher energy costs and no way to raise adequate additional funds.
With its purse strings tied by a tax-cap-imposed limit of 1.7 percent this fiscal year, Elgin-based School District U-46 needs to cut more than $40 million from its budget to “stop the bleeding,” said Larry Ascough, assistant superintendent. Even if an April 1 referendum passes, it won’t give the district enough funds to keep its current staffing level, he says.
As a result, the district has increased its accepted student-teacher ratio to allow for an average class size of 30 students, up from 27. And some elective courses will be eliminated. Besides teacher layoffs, the district plans to cut about 300 administrative, clerical and support positions.
The Elgin-area district, which includes 40,000 K through 12 students in 11 different towns, may be in worse financial shape than most districts, but it’s hardly alone in having to cut jobs, says George King, spokesman for the Illinois Education Association, which represents teachers.
Throughout Illinois, King said, “Sixty percent of the school districts are in dire straits and some predict it will be 80 percent by the start of school” this fall.
In Elgin, Patty Galiotos has little time to dwell on the politics behind the problem. She explains: “Looking for a job is keeping me busy.”
Public employment in Illinois, 2001
In 2001, the last year for which figures are available, there were the equivalent of 616,153 fulltime employees of state and local government in the state of Illinois. This works out to 496.13 FTEs per 10,000 population, compared to figures of 502.59 for Michigan, 533.59 for Indiana, 537.42 for Wisconsin and 601.72 for Iowa.
%% The biggest categories of employees were:
Elementary and secondary schools 252,535
Higher education 64,617
Police departments 44,229
Prisons and jails 25,437
Public welfare 23,567
Hospitals 22,984
Streets and highways 21,239
Transit 15,988
Parks and recreation 15,382
Firefighters 14,088
Source: U.S. Census Bureau: www.census.gov/govs/www/apesstl.html
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