Almost 300 Jersey City teachers receive layoff notices, so happy National Teacher Appreciation Week

Hope Schreiber
·Writer

Just in time for Teacher Appreciation Week, 272 non-tenured teachers in New Jersey were given layoff notices. The Jersey City educators were let go due to a $120 million budget shortfall. Ultimately, 700 teachers and school staff members throughout the school system might receive pink slips.

"We lost 33 million dollars in state aid," Dr. Norma Fernandez, a spokeswoman for the Jersey City Board of Education, explained as the cause. "We are a service industry — our payroll is most of our budget.”

"I have personally been warning across the last two years that we are heading over a financial cliff," Jersey City Board of Education President Sudan Thomas PIX11 News. "The problem is that the law only allows the city to repatriate $13 million dollars in collection."

Last week, the school district filed a lawsuit against the state, which alleges that hundreds of millions in state funding cuts, which are planned to take place over the next six years, are unconstitutional and harmful to the students.

“It’s surprising and scary at the same time,” Norbert Sygdziak, a parent of a first-grader in the district, told NJ.com. “Especially when Jersey City gives out such huge tax abatements, and the property tax people pay skyrockets from year to year, there’s still no money for schools. It’s outrageous and I don’t know where Jersey City as a whole is going with this.”

"Giving the teachers a pink slip in [Teacher] Appreciation Week? I don't think that's the right way to go," parent Shaheen Yadav told PIX11 News. However, teachers are legally required to receive a non-renewal notice prior to May 15 if their jobs are threatened.

"If you take away the teachers, and you take away music and arts, and all the extra classes that they have, who's going to want to live in Jersey City?" parent Karen McLaughlin said.

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