For thousands of teachers across the country, this summer has been anything but relaxing. Many are still waiting to hear whether they will be rehired for the new year after receiving layoff notices last spring. Others have been let go without a chance of recall and are looking for jobs in new districts, or even outside of education.

Among the districts that sent scores of layoff notices affecting AFT members: Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. The number of teachers receiving layoff notices ranges from just over 100 in some districts to 2,400 in Detroit. AFT research director Jewell Gould, who monitors the teacher job market and has helped many AFT affiliates deal with issues related to layoffs, calls Detroit “the perfect storm” of unfortunate circumstances coming together at the same time. These include a loss of students that has caused the district to close schools, a reduction in funding partly through the growth of charter schools, and poor management.

As their counterparts have done in many districts, leaders of the Detroit Federation of Teachers continue to bargain with management in an attempt to preserve some of those jobs, but it’s inevitable that some members won’t be rehired for the upcoming school year. The same factors that have hit Detroit, Gould says, are affecting many districts, especially in big cities.

The growth of charter schools, which can deplete budgets for regular public schools, has been especially devastating to AFT members in states like Ohio. Almost 500 Cleveland Teachers Union members received layoff notices in April. The situation was somewhat better in Cincinnati, where the AFT worked with the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers to craft a severance plan that attracted 360 CFT members and helped limit the number of layoffs.

Although layoffs and other cutbacks in school districts are due in part to conditions beyond their control, such as economic downturns, many districts continue to handle budget problems in ways that make life more difficult than it needs to be for teachers and ultimately for students. As Gould points out, it becomes very hard to recruit new teachers for the fall when the union contract still hasn’t been settled in the summer or even at the start of school. Given a choice, many teachers will opt for a job with a more stable outlook. And the practice of sending out layoff notices each year and then rehiring some section of the group also tends to drive teachers to other districts or even out of the profession. “It’s very inefficient and unproductive,” Gould says, adding that some teachers who are rehired end up teaching subjects for which they really aren’t prepared.

Besides helping affiliates deal with the crises at hand, Gould and the AFT research and information services department are working with some AFT locals to take a more systematic look at teacher hiring (and firing) practices. Districts have not done a good job of tracking what happens to laid-off teachers, so the AFT and some affiliates—starting with the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers—are tracking down some of those teachers to ask them whether they are teaching elsewhere, whether being laid off and recalled many times affects their future plans to teach, and to determine how the layoffs have affected the demographic makeup of the teaching force. The information, Gould hopes, can be another tool to help local unions promote more sensible district personnel practices.