Budget-Driven Personnel Shifts Pressure Districts

Michelle Rodriguez works with students in her 8th grade English class at Rayburn Middle School in San Antonio.

—Lisa Krantz for Education Week

When the budget-cutting ended this year in one rural North Texas school district, the people-moving began.

Forced to chop its total staff to 55 employees from 64, the Perrin-Whitt Consolidated Independent school system went the route of many districts across the country: It made the majority of its reductions by encouraging early retirements and not filling open positions.

But then the 377-student school system had to cover the assignments of the people who had left. And doing...