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About 200 staff members in the two school districts received layoff notices last year. Educators who weren’t recalled to local rosters have had to make hard decisions about where to work, where to live and whether to stay in teaching.
Penny Waite signed each of her students’ yearbooks in June with intention, filling her notes with all of the encouragement she had planned to deliver over the course of many years.
She wanted them to keep pursuing their theater dreams — but no longer had the luxury of time to ensure it.
“It was like showing my hand,” she said.
Waite’s job as a South Eugene High School theater teacher was one of the 268 full-time equivalent positions cut in Eugene School District 4J at the end of the school year. She was just finishing her second year of teaching.
Waite, 26, studied theater as an undergraduate. But she got a master’s in education because she wanted stability more than she wanted a life in professional theater. After being laid off, however, she was able to find more jobs in professional theater than in teaching.
She will once again supervise theater productions this year. Instead of managing technical theater students in the South Eugene High School auditorium, Waite will manage technical theater professionals at the Hult Center. She’s hopeful she’ll enjoy her new role but never expected her life would take the turn it did.
Last year’s layoffs in Eugene and Springfield schools made waves throughout the community. Only six years after COVID caused educator shortages across Oregon, budget cuts this year have limited teaching positions in Lane County and forced teachers to move, take on long commutes or find work outside of education.
Living in Lane County, working in Linn County
Scott Boyer began his 13th year of teaching with a 55-minute commute.
The former Springfield High School science teacher was one of 27 Springfield educators laid off in January due to budget constraints and a new union contract. Boyer spent the rest of the school year working nearly every day as a substitute, taking any shift he could get, even in elementary schools.
After finding only four positions within a one-hour radius of Eugene, he scored a job at Sweet Home High School teaching science. Boyer asked every school district where he interviewed what the probability of layoffs would be, cautious of a repeat of last year. Sweet Home has a large freshman class this year, making job stability more probable.
For now, with his wife working in Springfield, Boyer plans to continue living in Eugene. He’s content to decompress with punk music on the long drives to and from his new job. He still grieves his position at Springfield High School, however.
“It was the best job I had,” he said. “The science team over at Springfield High School is phenomenal. Losing that team where I knew I was supported and knew I had people to count on — outside of, ‘Oh, I just lost my job,’ I was like, ‘I just lost these amazing people as well.’”
A new life on the coast
As she read through her class list in late August, Megan Brown recognized several last names. In her hometown of about 6,400 people, it wasn’t surprising.
It’s been five years since she last lived in the Oregon coastal town of Brookings. She now teaches sixth- and seventh-grade math at her alma mater, Azalea Middle School, and lives in her childhood home with her husband, Austin, and baby.
Brown was also caught in Springfield’s abrupt midyear layoffs. She delivered her son, Eli, shortly after. Like Boyer, she set about a one-hour radius in her job search and found only three middle school positions and two elementary positions that she was qualified for. The scramble to find work was more frightening with the new responsibility of a baby.
“Am I going to have to go back to being a waitress?” Brown recalled thinking to herself.
The worst-case scenario, she thought, was that her Mary Kay side hustle could sustain them if she put enough effort into it.
Brown and her husband wanted to find a way to stay in Springfield. Brown loved her nail techs, her midwife, Eli’s pediatrician and her friends. But after some cajoling from Brookings friends and family, she applied for the Azalea Middle School position and got it. Then came the move with a baby in tow.
It was not Brown’s first choice to move four hours away, but returning home has had its perks.
Brookings’ tiny size, rural location and higher prices have prompted the district to offer teachers higher pay. Brown received a moving stipend and will earn $15,000 more a year than she did in Springfield, making it possible for her husband to be a stay-at-home dad for Eli. Returning home has also meant more grandparent time for Eli, plenty of nostalgia for Brown and more beach and river time for the whole family.
“It kind of started to feel like a little blessing in disguise, Springfield letting me go, as much as it sucked at the time,” Brown said.
They still make the trek to see Eli’s pediatrician in Eugene, however. Brown isn’t ready to let go of that constant just seven months into his life.
A new stage
In her new role at the Hult, Waite will be paid similarly to her teaching job but will be able to earn overtime pay. A job in education could never give her that perk.
Still, Waite’s heart is in teaching.
She will pick up substitute shifts in 4J this year when stage management work at the Hult is slow, and she’s being commissioned to make the set for one of South Eugene’s fall productions. The interactions she’ll get with students, however, will be brief, and she will miss witnessing her students grow.
Said Waite: “Teaching a student and seeing them learn and have confidence in that knowledge and that skill is one of the greatest feelings of all time.”
