Floyd County cuts cause concern about job market this year.
The Floyd County education budget cuts that ultimately will cost 120 people their jobs certainly got the attention of Berry College education majors, but they did not send these majors running for the exits.
A Reduction in Force (RIF) plan was announced by the Floyd County School System in early February, a slate of cuts that will eliminate 120 positions for the 2013-2014 school year. Some of those cuts will hit close to home.
The Floyd County teacher working with Berry senior Lindsay Cannon, for example, was informed that his teaching contract would not be extended, said Cannon, who is a student teacher at Johnson Elementary School. Steve Meyers’s position is one of those that have been cut.
The cuts will “make it harder to get a job,” Cannon said. “But [teaching jobs] are still out there.”
Neither Berry’s education program nor its student teachers were affected by the Floyd County RIF.
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Jackie McDowell,
dean of Berry’s Charter School.
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Jacqueline McDowell, dean of Berry’s Charter School of Education and Human Sciences, said she was not worried about the future of the teacher education students.
The recent budget cuts represent the first RIF for Floyd County, McDowell said, which is noteworthy because RIFs have become commonplace in Georgia public schools and throughout the nation.
McDowell said she would not reconsider advising students to become teachers because these fluctuations in school systems are “a fact of life.” In fact, Cannon said she remembered that the job market was not ideal three years ago when she was a freshman.
“The job market goes up and down,” she said. “[For] people who are committed, this is their passion and they are still going to do it no matter what.”
The RIF has not affected the number of Berry student teachers in area schools, according to McDowell, nor will it affect Fall 2013 student teaching assignments; they have already been made.
And if the job market erodes even further? Berry education professors say there still is great value in an education degree, regardless of vocational choice after graduation.
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Mary Outlaw,
professor of education at Berry
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“Preparing to teach, prepares you to be successful in many other fields,” said Mary Outlaw, field experience and student teaching director at Berry.
McDowell pointed out that teaching opportunities also exist abroad, and that an education degree makes sense in positions with social service agencies.
Related Links:
– Berry College Teacher Education program