Texas public school districts have an estimated 32,000 fewer employees than they may have had if the state hadn’t cut more than $5 billion in public education spending during the legislative session. That includes almost 12,000 fewer teachers.
The numbers are from this report released by an Austin-based school finance consulting firm. Moak, Casey & Associates recently surveyed school districts across the state. 60 participated.
“We had a number of districts tell us that they reduced staff in various categories such as staff that were associated with specific grant programs that the state had cut,” Lynn Moak said.
The 30,000 staff reductions weren’t all layoffs. Some districts didn’t hire teachers they needed to deal with increased enrollment. Other positions were shed through retirements or resignations.
At the beginning of the legislative session, the firm had estimated 100,000 school district jobs would be affected by state budget cuts.