By Alain Jehlen
Donna McNair is likely to lose her job, but she’s not mostly worried about herself.
“My bigger concern is with the children who will suffer,” says this 10-year special education paraprofessional. “That’s who I feel the worst for. We’re adults and we’ll get through it, but the children don’t understand budget cuts.”
McNair works in Brockton, Mass., a city of some 93,000 located 20 miles south of Boston. She was one of several hundred educators and parents who descended on the school board this week to let them know about the devastating impact on adults and children of the current plan to lay off teachers, paraprofessionals, and other staff to plug a $9.7 million budget hole.
Brockton, like other cities around the country, is reeling from the shrunken tax revenues that have followed in the wake of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression.
Originally, the Brockton administration sent pink slips to a stunning 430 teachers out of about 1,300 in the district, and proposed to eliminate 75 of 350 para positions along with many other support professionals and other staff.
With new estimates for school funding next year, and sharp cuts in non-staff spending, officials pared their layoff plans to 112 teacher positions, 62 paras, 24 custodians, and 41 other staff by last night.
Wearing a bright “RIF” sticker, paraprofessional McNair explained that she works with 12 students whose disabilities range from mild autism to Down Syndrome. She helps a teacher with instruction and she takes students to job sites including a hospital and a can-recycling center, where they learn skills to help them be productive citizens after they leave school. She also works with her students in sewing and making bracelets.
“You’d be amazed at what these children can do when there are very few students working with one person,” says McNair.
Lorraine Niccoli, president of the Brockton Paraprofessional Association, said paras are “the best deal in town” because they do vital work for very little pay—which also means eliminating their jobs doesn’t save much money.
Librarian Marjorie Adler had hard data to show the effects of staff cuts. Last year, she worked full-time at South Middle School. Students there checked out 4,900 books. This year, because of cutbacks, she’s split between that school and another, and just 2,500 books were borrowed at South. Next year, she’ll likely be gone.
High school math teacher Lloyd Lamarre, with seven years’ experience, was not on the layoff list. He and other Brockton teachers wore black to support their riffed colleagues. “
They’re not just coworkers, they’re my family,” he told the school board.
One of those family members with a job on the chopping block is high school science teacher John Bergonzi.
“This is my third year of teaching and my third rif,” he said. If he does lose his job, Bergonzi will go back and look for another teaching position somewhere because “this is my fourth career, and I’ve finally found one I’m made for.”
Parents were at the hearing to speak out against the cuts, too.
John Sullivan, father of two students in a two-way bilingual program that is threatened, described how the program has broadened his own horizons.
“We are bringing many diverse cultural and ethnic groups together,” he said. “In so doing it is becoming more difficult to say, ‘those people’ and easer to say, ‘us.’”
Tim Sullivan, president of the Brockton Education Association, denounced the “shell game” of shifting costs from the city to the school budget, which he said is partly responsible for the large number of school layoffs. He said his union will keep looking for ways to save jobs and soften the impact on students.
Photo: Sarah Nathan/Massachusetts Teachers Association