Guided by Honig and Hatch's (2004) conceptualization of bridging and buffering, we undertook an analysis of reduction in force (RIF) provisions from 546 Ohio teacher collective bargaining agreements. We asked the following question: Are the most disadvantaged school districts providing greater protections to tenured teachers when making RIF decisions? Logistic regression analysis revealed a negative relationship (p < 0.05) between the percentage of students within the district living in poverty and bridging to state efforts to reform the use of seniority alone in RIF decisions.