By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org
    
PEORIA, Ill. – A recently adopted Illinois education reform law is allowing Peoria school officials to ignore the union seniority system as they determine what teachers to lay off in an effort to eliminate a $6 million deficit.
     
Peoria school officials voted Monday to issue pink slips to 53 full-time teachers, including 28 teachers who “are either tenured teachers who received unsatisfactory evaluations or were hired too late in the school year to receive evaluations,” according to PJstar.com.
    
In previous years, Illinois school leaders were forced to lay off educators based on the union seniority system, which is blind to a teacher’s effectiveness. The practice has been dragging down student achievement for years, particularly when school budgets are tight and talented younger teachers are laid off. But recent education reform legislation, Senate Bill 7, eliminated the practice, freeing school leaders to keep the brightest and most effective teachers when times get tough, regardless of their length of service.
    
The change is certainly a good thing for students, but the state’s teachers union is less than enthused about the new rules. The performance-based cuts go against the union tradition of treating all educators as interchangeable parts.
     
“Terry Knapp, a retired teacher and former union president, warned that laying off tenured teachers could generate lawsuits to test the education reform law, known as Senate Bill7,”according to news reports.
     
To read more on the story, go to PJstar.com.