Denver schools recently said sorry for making a mistake and decided to hire back four teachers who were laid off from Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy. This happened because there wasn’t enough money for the school next year, so they had to cut costs by getting rid of some teachers. But now, they changed their minds and will keep those teachers after all.
However, even though these teachers got their jobs back, there’s still not enough money for everything the school needs. This means they might have to let go of some other teachers soon. This is making teachers worry because the school year is almost over, and finding a new job might be hard.
Besides the four teachers, the school also had to let go of three other staff members who help with different things at the school. But there’s a rule that says teachers who’ve worked there for a while will still have a job somewhere in the district. The district even organized job fairs to help these teachers find new jobs.
Kunsmiller is a school where students can learn about creative and artistic things from kindergarten to twelfth grade. It’s located in southwest Denver.
The head of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, Rob Gould, said that redoing the budget like this is something they don’t usually see happening.
Each school in Colorado has a committee that helps decide how money should be spent. These committees give advice to school leaders about what’s important to spend money on. Every January, they talk about the budget for the next school year, and in June, the school board approves it.
Earlier this year, when Kunsmiller’s committee met to talk about money, the principal didn’t show them the budget. This made it hard for them to give good advice about where to spend money.
A person in charge of another committee said that budgets should always be public, meaning everyone should be able to see them. The person who was the principal at the time got replaced, and now the new person in charge agrees that budgets should be open to everyone.
The school where the new principal works, Denver School of the Arts, also had some layoffs, and they had the same problem with not showing the budget to the committee.