Hartford Public School teachers and staff find out whether their jobs are safe

It's news no teacher wants to hear.

Hartford Public Schools are cutting a total of 387 positions. This includes 320 school staff positions and 67 from the central office.

"This is hard on people," said Carol Gale, president of Hartford Federation of Teachers. "What that means is there going to be less adults for our students."

Gale said of these school positions, about 200 are teachers. These cuts also affect social workers, counselors and psychologists as well as custodians, security officers and paraeducators.

"There are cuts across the district in every single position," Gale said.

She said when a position is cut, the person can get reassigned based on their seniority in that position.

With 140 vacancies across the district, Gale said it’s still too early to know how many employees will actually lose their jobs, but she thinks it could be around 100.

What do these layoffs mean for students? Larger classroom sizes, less course offerings, electives and less support staff. In fact, Gale said they're losing all classroom paras.

"So, some of our kindergarten classrooms will not have an extra set of hands to assist children, and that is very useful at younger grades," Gale said.

She said Connecticut's education system faced similar challenges a few decades ago.

"Back in the 80s, there was this fear that education was facing the exact same crisis that education was facing today," Gale said. "That we were not bringing in new teachers, that there was a silver tsunami coming, we were going to be having all these retirees."

Gale said at the time, the state passed the Educational Enhancement Act, which raised salaries and kept teachers in the profession.

"I would say in the last 20 to 25 years, I would say we've been back on a gradual decline," Gale said.

People from Hartford say they're upset to hear teachers and students will be impacted by these cuts.

"It's unfortunate, you know," Dashorn Whitehead, of Hartford, said. "The teachers are everything. Teachers raised me." 

The district said these cuts are a combination of COVID funding running out, and not enough funding from the city.

"We need to invest in education. That's for sure. And we need that at all levels. Municipal, state and federal," Gale said.