Teachers not writing letters of recommendation

This year, the parcel tax, which helps fund multiple K-12 public education and facility districts, was set to expire in June. On March 5, the passing of Measure MB reinstated the tax for another six years.

In an effort to raise awareness for the measure, MBUSD promised “the attraction and retaining of high quality teachers, protecting quality math, science, technology, reading, and writing programs and maintaining manageable class sizes.” 

Even after the passing of the parcel tax, the district doesn’t seem to be fulfilling any of their promises. As of this May, many teachers have received pink slips.

California Ed Code requires districts to give pink slips to all teachers who may face layoffs by March 15. When this date came around, 47 certificated staff members were notified of the possibility of their layoff. With more uncertainty in employment, class sizes grow. 

“Science shows the more students you put in the class the more distractions there are,” said AP Environmental Science teacher Trevor Oystrick. “I currently am supposed to have thirty two students in my class but I roughly have thirty six in each period and because of the layoff, the amount of students in each period will be unable to even fit in any other classroom.”

Core classes like English, Math and the Sciences are important for students to be excelling in during their highschool years. However,with increasing class sizes, teachers lose the ability to teach effectively. 

The class sizes take away from the students’ one on one relationships with some teachers and causes most of them to be unwilling to write letters of recommendation because of the increasing number of students and time management within the classroom. 

“As teachers’ everyday job in the classroom has become unmanageable, more and more have been put on our plates with less support so in order to manage the best classroom and be the best teacher I can, that means I personally made the decision to not be writing letters of recommendation in addition to classroom work.” Lisa Cook, Junior Honors and AP English Teacher.  

MBUSD’s harsh reactions to the parcel tax are at fault for students not getting letters of recommendation. In order to gain better treatment from the district teachers have to levy every tool at their disposal including withholding letters of rec. 

This following school year, there will be fewer teachers writing recommendation letters, which might have a significant impact on Costa students’ college decision results and future connections with teachers.

“Since junior year is ending, having a majority of teachers not writing letters of rec for the upcoming seniors really stresses me out because I now have a smaller variety of teachers from my main core classes to ask,” said Junior Esperanza Edwards. 

With the district’s poor management on this topic, it puts strain on students’ academics. Leaving the teachers left with no option but to act on the district’s budget cuts and increase class sizes, putting the student and teacher relationships at risk.  

While this stresses not only the teachers out, now students have the worries of how and who they will get their letters of recommendation from. 

Since teachers are being stripped of their career, only students can help teachers’ voices be heard in order to withdraw the stress for everyone.