We’re facing difficult times right now. At all levels – from states to individual schools – we’ve had to make sacrifices and see many programs and budgets cut.
As such, it’s no surprise that we hear from a lot of people on the subject of teacher job loss, and what we as a Department can do to help alleviate some of this pain.
Well, I want to assure you all that the Department is doing all we can to help save jobs. One major way that we’ve done this is through the Education Jobs Fund – a $10 billion education fund to support education jobs in the 2010-11 school year. This money was distributed to states by a formula based on population figures, and states can distribute their funding to school districts based on their own primary funding formula or districts’ relative share of federal Title I funds.
In addition, over the last two years, the Department has been able to support 300,000 education jobs through stimulus funding provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Aside from providing emergency support to states, it’s difficult for the Department to address more specific job-loss issues, because education is still the responsibility of State and local governments. By law, we can’t intervene in personnel issues or the allocation of State or local resources.
But, for individual teachers who may be looking for teaching opportunities, the Department’s TEACH website will be able to help. It lists thousands of jobs in your area, and should provide you with the information you need to help secure a teaching position. For more information, visit our site at teach.gov.
