With only a few days left until the end of a tumultuous school year, one in five teachers at the San Diego Unified School District has now been laid off.
We’ve reported this crisis from the start. We’ve explained how the district got here, what it is trying to do to keep teachers at local schools, and how an internal struggle at the teachers union has been instrumental in keeping the union and the district from talking about concessions that could limit the number of layoffs.
But now it’s time to get personal.
We want to tell some of the stories of the thousands of teachers who have been issued layoffs. We have introduced some of them already, via our gallery of laid off teachers of the year, but we want to take our effort a step further.
So, we’re asking for your help.
Please get in touch and tell us the stories of some of the teachers who have touched kids’ lives in San Diego and who have now been laid off. And tell us how the layoffs are hitting classrooms and kids. We want to hear your stories.
We want to tell, in human stories, the real impact of tens of millions of dollars in deficits and thousands of pieces of pink paper.
Email me or get in touch via Twitter and tell me which teachers I should be interviewing and writing about. I want to know how the layoffs have impacted both staff and students. I’m particularly interested in hearing from schools where a majority of teachers will be laid off and replaced by new staff if nothing changes in the next few weeks.
And please put me in touch with those teachers and their colleagues.
Let’s tell their stories together.
Will Carless is an investigative reporter at Voice of San Diego currently focused on local education. You can reach him at will.carless@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.550.5670.
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