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Copyright © 2010 The Morning Call

ID: 4660680
Publication Date: July 18, 2010
Day: Sunday
Page: A1
Edition: FIRST
Section: News
Type: Local
Dateline:
Column:
Length: long

Byline: By Christopher Baxter and Andrew McGill OF THE

MORNING CALL

Headline: Classrooms hit hard by recession **The Lehigh Valley shed

more than 150 education jobs this year, sending dozens of teachers to the
unemployment lines.

The budget storm that struck Lehigh Valley school districts this spring
swept dozens of teachers from the classroom to the unemployment lines,
uprooting families and livelihoods and leaving many wondering, what
now?

Winds blew hardest in Easton, where the school board and administration
erased 82 positions, or about 55 people, most untenured teachers with less
than four years of service. Some were fresh out of college, others were in
the midst of a career change.

But the financial whirlwind was far from isolated.

The Bethlehem Area School District cut 35 positions, laying off long-term
substitutes, and the Bangor Area School District axed 32 positions,
sending two dozen aides packing with pink slips. The Northampton Area
and Northwestern Lehigh school districts also trimmed jobs.

All told, Valley districts shed more than 150 positions to balance their
2010-11 ledgers, the largest education labor cutback in recent history. For
those out of work, their summer respite becomes a frantic job hunt fraught
with dim prospects of success.
Teaching jobs have long been considered safe havens from economic
uncertainty, especially in Pennsylvania, where the state School Code bars
districts from layoffs for financial reasons. But administrators have
circumvented the law, and teachers can now count themselves among the
roughly 10 percent of Lehigh Valley residents without work.

The Morning Call interviewed three former Easton Area School District
teachers about their decision to make education their career, their time in
the classroom and their hopes for the future. They are the casualties of
education in a post-Great Recession era.

Inspiration cut short

When she got her layoff letter last month, art teacher Lindsay Sampson
Woodruff thought about skipping the district exhibit that night. Her
husband talked her out of it.

Seeing fellow laid-off teachers that evening was the easy part. Facing her
former students was much harder. Finishing just her first year at Shawnee
Elementary, Woodruff broke down while telling one of her second-
graders she wouldn't be coming back next year.

"She kind of started to cry a little bit," Woodruff said. "I was devastated --
I felt bad for even telling them."

Woodruff grew up in Easton, taking some of her first art classes in March
Elementary. Even as a student, she said, she could see the priorities:
Athletics were celebrated, art was not.

When she came back to the district after a circuitous career in marketing
and nonprofits, the 29-year-old set out to change that. One of two art
teachers hired out of 200 applicants, she took her students beyond paint
and pastels, integrating science, literature and technology into her lessons.

In one of her favorite projects, students made puppets inspired by "Where

the Wild Things Are," and, with a touch of imagination, they paraded like
monsters around the school. Another time, her kids cut out more than
6,000 paper snowflakes and donated them to the city.

Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr. thanked them with a visit.

Woodruff's layoff notice wasn't a surprise; she had only been teaching a
year. But it still pains her to think her job could have been saved with a
little more cooperation between the administration and the teachers union.

"I really encourage my students to solve problems creatively -- it's never

too late to try to rethink and solve a problem," she said. "I think we've set
this very bad example for our students."

Woodruff hopes to work part time in the district, she said. She will make
ends meet with private art lessons and workshops, the same kind of
inspired work she offered her Easton students.

'I was put here to teach'

At the beginning of each school year, Ritish Sanal, 35, told his eighth-
grade math class that no one, regardless of ability, would go to high
school without proficiency in pre-algebra or algebra. It wasn't a hope or a
wish, he said, but an expectation.

Only 15 of 207 students he taught during his two years missed that mark,
he said.

"I don't think it's magic," Sanal said. "I told them, 'If you come in with the
attitude that you want to learn, I will make sure you learn.' "

Sanal began his career in Allentown's Alternative Learning Classroom,

serving as a coordinator working with struggling students. When he
realized he had a knack for reaching out to those falling through the
cracks, he went back to school to get his master's degree in education.

Sanal returned to Allentown to teach for two years before taking a job in
Easton in 2008. The district's diversity was inspiring, he said, especially
when by the end of his time with his students, almost all of them could
crunch numbers on the same level.

"We have the rich of the rich, and the poor of the poor, and they all go to
the same building," Sanal said. "They learn to interact, but they also learn
to learn."

Numbers came back to haunt Sanal when he found himself on the short
list for layoffs. He knew his wife, Carrie, who has worked as a seventh-
grade math teacher in Easton since 2005, would be safe. But he also knew
his job was at risk.

Sanal does not blame the school board or the administration for making
the cuts. But he can't help but be disappointed to have to clean out a desk
he had hoped to call his own for 30 or 35 years.

"I guess it wasn't meant to be," he said.

Sanal has applied for teaching jobs as far away as Philadelphia, but so far,
nothing. In the meantime, he and his wife struggle at home with their
three young boys. They recently canceled a beach trip to save money.

"I don't want odd jobs, I don't want to collect unemployment," Sanal said.
"I was put here to teach, and that's what I want to do."

'This is where I'll retire'

Michelle Fitch could not have been happier in her second career. A bank
employee for much of her adult life, she knew going into teaching would
bring a huge pay cut. She didn't care.

"This was something I was very passionate about," she said. "I love my
job, regardless of all the stresses and a lot of the work that I do."

At age 40 and with three years in the district, Fitch thought her job as a
third-grade teacher at Shawnee Elementary was safe. She was finished
with long-term substituting, proving her chops as a fill-in for kindergarten
and third-grade teachers.

Hired to fill a departing teacher's position, Fitch learned to handle the

delicate transitions of third grade: the first Pennsylvania System of School
Assessment tests, the first lessons in cursive. She had the subjects down
pat, and she learned how to balance the needs of both the advanced and
the lagging.

A lifetime of yearning to work with kids had become real. "This is where
I'll retire," she told herself.

Then rumors of cuts turned to reality. The uncertainty was the worst part,
she said. For that, she blames the school board.

"One minute, they voted they're going to cut. Another time, they'd say,
'No, we're going to save all the teachers,'" Fitch said. "It was a lot of
anxiety -- many sleepless nights."

In the end, her name was on the cut list.

Fitch's situation is particularly precarious. Her husband, also a former

bank employee, recently closed the billiards hall he bought 16 years ago
and has not found a new job. She has two kids -- both students in the
district -- and after Aug. 31, the family will be without health care
coverage.

She does not want to leave education, but schools are not hiring and she
needs a job.

christopher.baxter@mcall.com

610-778-2283