Margaret Hart had a circuitous route to her first full-time teaching job. She thought she wanted to teach music at the secondary level but a few years into her studies realized her passion was for elementary school. She had to stop her studies at one point for financial reasons. She also started a family.
“Working, going to school with two kids takes a little bit longer but I finally finished, finally student-taught and last year I got hired just 10 days before school started,” Hart said. “I got a 4th grade position. I got my classroom all ready and it was just a magical wonderful time for it finally to all come together.”
Hart knew she had landed in the right place.
“The school district in general, but especially Keet Gooshi Heen is just a wildly supportive school. I feel like my first year teaching went really well. I had a great group of kids.”
And then came budget season and layoffs. The Sitka School District had to cut 16 positions.
“There is always a bit of uncertainty and always a little bit of worry but it’s always this idea of well we figure it out every year and this year probably around the end of April, early May, it really started feeling like this year was going to be different.”
When the chips fell Hart was among 14 staff whose contracts were not renewed.
“It’s devastating to so many families but at the same time it is what we deal with and something that is a yearly cycle,” Hart said. “We go into it with our eyes wide open. It doesn’t make it any less difficult.”
Longtime Sitka teacher Stephanie Peterson said the layoffs are disheartening. “For everybody. I know it’s not what the board wants, it’s not what the administration wants. It’s not what anybody in town wants.”
Peterson feels for Hart and her colleagues. “Most of them obviously haven’t been teaching for very long; they’re not tenured. And I’m pretty sure most of the community has no idea how hard those first year and second year teachers work and how many hundreds of unpaid hours they put in. And when you start teaching, you know, the first year is so exciting, but it’s so difficult. And you work so hard.”
Peterson knows from experience how early-career teachers start looking ahead to the following school year, thinking about what they want to improve and change.
“Next year I’m going to try this, and I learned this, and next year I want do this, and then all of a sudden, through these circumstances, it’s taken away,” Peterson said.
There are also financial realities.
“When you get a new job like that you might buy a house or you might have insurance,” Peterson said. “You know a lot of these teachers, their spouses work in the charter industry or the fishing industry or a small construction company. They don’t have insurance, so economically of course it’s really frightening. “
Margaret Hart is fortunate to have a partner with a steady job and benefits. But she knows that’s not the case for everyone.
“We’re going to stick around for this year and keep our fingers crossed that things equal out,” Hart said. “In the future, if it doesn’t, you know, I want to stay in this field. I want to stay in education. So we’ll probably look at other places, at least for short period stints.”
Hart’s biggest takeaway is just how much uncertainty permeates the education system right now.
“It affects more than just me, you know, not having a job, it affects, you know, my child who’s in the school district, there’s uncertainty of what grades people will be teaching, there’s uncertainty of how many teachers at each grade level, how many kids are going to be in each class. So it’s just uncertainty across the board.”
Both teachers worry about the impact of these layoffs on kids and class sizes and opportunities. Peterson shakes her head at Alaska’s lack of a dedicated source of revenue for education. Hart urges people to stay tuned in and involved. Meantime she’s looking forward to getting back into the classroom as soon as she can.
“Even with all the uncertainty. I would do this uncertainty again year after year if I had to. Because this is something I really care about and I love doing.”
