Effect of layoffs

English language learns among those to suffer from Albany school job cuts.

English language learners are just one group of students among many who will suffer from large-scale layoffs faced by Albany school district employees.

Liz Otero teaches English to middle schoolers whose first language is not English at the Albany International Center, a center that is at risk of closing because the district needs to fill a budget gap of between $18.8 million and $25.6 million for the coming school year.

Otero is not personally worried about losing her job — cuts will be based on seniority and she’s been with the district for eight years — but she’s worried about being stretched too thin, and about her students who will suffer because of it.

“I think these cuts are going to devastate the children,” Otero said. “It really feels to me like the clearest form of systemic racism that Albany and Schenectady are facing these crazy cuts, while miles away in Bethlehem and Guilderland it’s like nothing is happening.”

Under civil rights law, schools are required to provide English language learning services, so to provide those same services with less resources the districts will be rearranging where students and teachers go

to still get the support. “It won’t be at the same level as what is provided now at the International Center,” Otero said.

“It is really looking at trying to do more with less because here’s the thing: The needs don’t go away just because the funding does,” School Superintendent

Kaweeda Adams said.

Some services that usually happen every day might only be able to happen once a week or might be embedded into the classroom model with a support personnel working alongside a teacher, Adams said.

“Those very programs and wraparound services that we have in place for our students are jeopardized,” Adams said. “And what jeopardize means is we are not able to do them to the fullest extent so then we have to modify that just to make sure we are providing basic level services.”

Another fix is to move more students to learning fully online, a step that has already been made for most students grades 7-12, and increasing the class sizes of the virtual model.

But some of the refugees and immigrants that Otero teaches don’t have a lot of experience with computers, she said. And many don’t have parents at home who speak English so cannot help their child navigate virtual learning, Rifat Filkins, the executive director at RISSE, said.

“(Virtual learning) is such a big challenge for refugee children,” Filkins said. “Many of them are behind in school already. Having no in between, no hybrid, I just don’t think kids will be able to do it. Our past experience with refugee families showed very clearly that just being online is not working for students.”

The district will be working over the weekend to continue to find ways to reduce their budget. Currently, 222 employees face losing their jobs, including 33 teachers. This might mean more staff cuts, Adams said. But it also might mean reducing other program areas, field trips, athletics and clubs. The board is likely to make a decision on the staff cuts at their meeting Tuesday.

“Schools and teachers are consistently used to being asked to do more with less,” Laura Franz, the president of the Albany Public School Teachers’ Association, said. “But this is ridiculous. And it unfairly disadvantages, in particular, urban education systems.”