Across the country, states are struggling with their most severe budget crises in more than a decade, and these financial strains are having a direct impact on school employees.

The problem starts at the national level. When President Bush took office, he inherited a government that was enjoying a huge surplus. Today, he presides over growing budget deficits for the foreseeable future. Combine a massive tax cut, the economic downturn and increased spending to fight terrorism in Bush's short tenure, and there are no funds left to invest in education and other vital social services. That all cascades down to the states, which are also dealing with soaring Medicaid costs, lower tax collections and higher unemployment spending, among other factors. Unlike the federal government, however, states (with the sole exception of Vermont) cannot run a deficit.

Chances are that your state, like at least 38 others, was forced to revise the budget (i.e., cut spending or raise revenues) that it previously had prepared for fiscal year 2002 or tap into "rainy day" funds.

What has this all meant for school employees? At the extreme, some PSRPs have lost their jobs. Reports from just a couple of states show the kind of cutbacks taking place among workers represented by AFT locals.

In California, for example, 14 paraprofessional positions were eliminated in Gilroy; in Lawndale, five maintenance positions were cut; and in Aromas-San Juan, the district ended up laying off six people after initially proposing to cut 20 classified employees (one-third of the small local's bargaining unit).

Across the country in Florida, some PSRPs are also out of work, and other cuts are being made that will leave existing employees financially worse off. In Seminole County, for example, some custodians had their work year reduced from 12 months to 11 months, some teacher assistants went from 196 days a year to 186, and some food service workers had their day reduced by two hours. Any way you look at it, those are big pay cuts. Another trend is to freeze hiring. When someone leaves a job, the district doesn't replace that person--but that doesn't mean the amount of work to be done also gets reduced. Or there's the more subtle example from Sumter County. When they have openings for two six-hour employees, administrators there have been known to hire one eight-hour employee and leave the other four hours vacant--again, without reducing the amount of work to be done.

As Clara Cook, president of the AFT's affiliate in St. Lucie County, Fla., puts it, "It isn't going to be very pleasant to be an ESP (Florida's term for PSRPs) in our county."

Finally, to take a broader statewide example from the middle of the country, Minnesota is looking at eliminating nearly 3,000 school staff positions in order to save more than $191 million. According to projections by the state school boards association, 2,827 staff positions will be cut next school year, about half of them nonteaching positions.

Although unions have fought hard to reduce the number of layoffs, get laid-off members priority for rehiring, or negotiate severance, health insurance and other benefits for those who lose jobs, it's an uphill battle.

"The states are facing a particularly dire fiscal situation," says Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. "By many measures, states are in a historically difficult time, and the budget and revenue problems continue to get worse." His organization predicts that state budget woes will persist at least through next year.