Teachers union working to help find jobs for cut positions

Nearly 1,000 jobs are being cut from Hillsborough County Public Schools due to a $140 million budget shortfall, and the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association (HCTA) is figuring out ways to keep faculty employed, despite their units being cut.

"We're already working with a skeleton crew in Hillsborough County, so we're trying to talk about the value of these professionals in our buildings and we want them in there, so we're trying to crosswalk every single individual into a job for next year," said Rob Kriete, the President of the HCTA.

Kriete says he has not seen cuts this large in his 25 years of working with the district.  He says faculty can volunteer to be put in a pool to be relocated to a different school or teach a different unit. Then, there's a scoring system based on a teacher's effectiveness. Lower scores get put into that pool.

"What do we do when we have ten positions but 20 people for them, what are we going to do with those ten employees, what we're trying to do is still find them a job whether it would be, assigning an intent to learn, maybe I'm an English teacher and I'm going to get my certification in history, and I'm going to teach history next year as I'm earning my degree and certification for that," Kriete said.

READ Job cuts coming to Hillsborough County schools, but who gets cut uncertain

High Schools will see the biggest impact from the cuts with larger class sizes and fewer elective, art, and music classes, according to the HCTA.

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