LYNWOOD — The Lynwood school board voted 3-0 June 11 to lay off another 78 teachers, meaning 151 district teaching positions have been eliminated this year.

The board vote came after a nine-hour meeting June 10 that didn’t end until 3 a.m.

School board Vice President Alfonso Morales and board member Maria Lopez did not attend the June 11 meeting.

Linda George, a teacher at Lynwood High School, who received a layoff notice in March and later received a letter rescinding that notice expects to receive a second layoff notice this Saturday.

“Cutting 73 the first time wasn’t enough?” asked George, a former president of the Lynwood Teachers Association. “Now they’ve added another 78? What are school board members thinking? Basically, they’re going to take our rescind letters back, and they added more to the list. To me that doesn’t sound right. It’s wrong and unjust.”

George also questioned how three school board members could have the audacity to make such a huge decision without the other two members present.

“When you’re going to put something like that on the table, every board member should be present,” George said. “If there are some that can’t make it, then you wait for them.”

Plus, George added, because board members decided to continue the June 10 meeting to the next day at 3:30 p.m., very few people knew about the meeting. About 10 people were in attendance.

“I don’t know why parents aren’t up and arms about this,” she said. “We know that the district needs to lay some people off. We know that, but it should be done fairly and … and not all this camouflaging.”

Back in March, the school district initially proposed to eliminate 131 positions — a number school board members were not happy with. Then in April, the district rescinded 43 positions from the 131 proposed layoffs.

Val Zolfaghari, current president of the LTA, wasn’t happy with the 43 rescinds. He claimed the district wasn’t being up front with the actual numbers. In April, Zolfaghari told The Wave that in addition to 131 full-time teachers, an additional 19 non-reelect notices went out to long-term substitute teachers, 31 went out to non-reelects, and 10 teachers retired. All of those notices were sent out by the March 15 deadline — numbers, Zolfaghari said, that weren’t being fully disclosed.

At that time, Morales said that Zolfaghari was manipulating the numbers.

Two months later, Zolfaghari said he knows he wasn’t manipulating the numbers, not then and not now.

“We have the numbers, we have the documents, what is happening right now is what was going to happen from the beginning,” Zolfaghari said. “The school district was moving the numbers around to make it look like they were only reducing teachers by 131, but there were a lot more. In total, the number right now is 210 — who as of today, are out of the system in Lynwood. I wasn’t wrong then, and I’m not wrong now. The school board members need to demand the exact figures.”

That’s not the case, Bill Agopian, the district’s business manager said in an interview Wednesday afternoon. The school district in the last two months has presented what it is calling a “doomsday plan” to the public, telling them that if Proposition 1A-1E were not approved by voters on May 19, then board members would once again be compelled to revisit more cuts.

The district, as of April, was looking at operating in the 2009-10 school year under a $10.8 million deficit.

At the April 28 school board meeting, Agopian told the audience and the board members, that if the measures didn’t pass, then “we will be right back here telling [the community] that we have to make more cuts.”

And that’s exactly what’s happening. The only thing the district can say now, Agopian said, is that “we are not alone.”

“Every school district in California is finding itself battling with making cuts, every district is revisiting making more reductions,” he said. “That’s the only point we can make … that all of us, are scrambling to try to make things work.”

Still, Agopian said, the school district is hoping for a resolution at the state level that could change things. Unfortunately, he added, the final deadline for those numbers to come down the line [from the state] don’t have to be in our hands until August.

Agopian said the district’s ultimate goal right now is to submit a budget to the county for approval for the 2009-10 school year.

The district’s business manager said the school district is at the mercy of the state.

In adding another 78 positions to the first 73, the district is exercising the option to notice additional teachers by the August 15 deadline — also known as “a second window,” Agopian said.

“It’s horrible, we know. We don’t like what is happening and we feel horrible too,” Agopian said. “In working toward maintaining local governance and solvency, the school district has to present a budget to the county that will be accepted. Otherwise we will be at the mercy of the state.”

Casting one of the three votes to approve another 78 cuts was one of the hardest decisions school board member Rachel Chavez said she has ever had to make.

“We didn’t want to do it, but we had no other choice,” Chavez said. “It isn’t so much that you want to do it, but if we don’t do this, we will be bankrupt next year. The school district is operating down to the bare bones. There’s no summer school, we’ve thrown class-size reductions out the window, we are at a point where we are hurting the educational programs of the school district. … It’s very sad and it’s awful. None of us wanted to do this,” Chavez said.

“We walked out of that meeting with broken hearts,” she added. “We didn’t want to do this, but when you’re already operating with a $10 million deficit, it’s ghastly what we are facing, but we were given no other choice.”

Chavez said she hates to say it, but the school district right now is in disarray and will be that way possibly for the next school year.

“I hate to say it, but it’s true,” she said. “I don’t even know who’s in charge anymore. The entire state is in a financial mess. It’s a double whammy here in Lynwood, because not only are we dealing with our own mess, but we are also being affected by the state’s financial mess.”

Additionally, Chavez added, the master scheduling for schools hasn’t been finalized when usually it is completed by April or May every year. “And the state has nothing to do with that,” she said. Plus, there will be no summer school this year. Principals are not in place. Teacher assignments have not been made. The secondary schools don’t know whether they’re going to continue operating under block scheduling. And to top things off, the school board recently received and filed the resignation letter of the assistant superintendent of human resources.

George, the former teacher union head, said if the district’s management had done its due diligence two years ago — instead of hiring more and more teachers while enrollment numbers continued to decline — “then these cuts wouldn’t be so severe,” she said.

“I don’t think this school district and these board members know what they’re doing to these kids,” George said. “They talk about wanting to keep local control, but it’s going to be impossible to do that if they make all these cuts. It’s a sad commentary for us. All of this, it’s not the state’s fault, it’s the management and the leadership of this district who is at fault.”

The additional cuts, George said, will definitely lead to a state take-over in the next two years.

“This district was going places four years ago,” she said. “Only a few of our schools were program improvement schools, now the entire district is a program improvement district, and we’ll still be next year. That will be year four, and in year five, the doors will open for the state to come in and take over. You have to ask yourself if this school board is blind, or they’re being blinded.”

In the end, George said she will be all right. In fact, she is looking forward to a fight with the school district. Unfortunately, she said, “all of this, it’s not going to affect me, it’s going to affect the kids.”

Currently it is being assumed that the 43 teachers who received rescind letters will receive new reduction in force letters, but that isn’t certain.

What is certain is that 43 positions, along with an addition 35 positions, to make 78 — not counting the first 73 laid off — won’t know if they will have a job in Lynwood until after Aug. 15.