As districts such as New York City’s Department of Education and Providence (R.I.) Public Schools look at strapped budgets and begin layoffs, it is important to remember that the impact of these moves comes not so much in number of teachers laid off, but in which ones are lost. Young, talented teachers with less-seniority working in schools serving poor and minority kids are the ones who end up on the streets thanks to reverse-seniority (last hired-first fired or last in-first out) policies. And as studies by The New Teacher Project, University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education, and a recent report in the Yale Law Journal have pointed out, last hired-first fired equals kids dropping out into poverty and crime.

The American Civil Liberties Union made this point in a lawsuit if filed last year against Los Angeles Unified System over layoffs at three of the district’s poorest schools . This lead to a settlement that bans the use of seniority in layoffs in 45 of its schools serving its poorest kids. But as Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa points out in this video, the end of reverse seniority layoffs — and by extension, seniority-based privileges — must come to every school in America. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers should be ashamed of defending these atrocious policies that harms kids and even the young teachers in their rank-and-file. We can’t continue to proverbially (and sometimes, literally) killing our seeds before they grow.