The Public Schools of Brookline (PSB) announced a reallocation of current PSB World Language educators to combat an existing staffing shortage, in a Thursday, Aug. 3 statement posted on Smore.
The move aims to provide a middle school language program in each school. In the statement, PSB justified the purpose of the reallocation, which would reassign K-5 World Language teachers to middle school grades, stating that “ensuring our middle school world language program continues uninterrupted provides the most positive student impact.” PSB said it would use any additional full-time educators to provide “as much language continuity and exposure as possible, beginning in 5th grade and working backward to kindergarten.” It maintained that given the staffing shortage, this structure “protect[s] existing world language positions while also offering as much world language as feasible.”
The Brookline Educators Union (BEU), released a statement on Wednesday, Aug. 2, following a meeting between PSB and BEU leadership and K-8 World Language educators, criticizing the decision. They stated that the changes made would “effectively eliminate the World Language program at the K-5 level for almost all schools, depriving many students of Brookline Public Schools the opportunity to learn a foreign language.”
Per a timeline released by the BEU detailing the staffing crisis within the World Language department, at least 15 World Language educators resigned or took unpaid leaves of absence during the 2022-2023 school year. This staffing deficit followed what the BEU deemed to be “untenable” scheduling practices, which included insufficient time to transition between classes and attend team meetings, along with more demanding workloads than teachers of other subjects. In the PSB’s Aug. 3 statement, they noted that, despite a higher-than-usual need for personnel, they have not received enough applications to fill their open positions.
In an advocacy flyer posted on the BEU’s Facebook page on July 27, the BEU stated that “job postings were vague, some were never posted, and many that were posted were taken offline mid-summer.”
The PSB has committed to reposting Spanish teaching positions in the week of Aug. 7 “to reflect current staffing needs more accurately.”
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
