Story Created:
Mar 10, 2010 at 9:53 PM PST
Story Updated:
Mar 12, 2010 at 5:24 PM PST
LYNWOOD — The final list of 187 positions scheduled to receive layoff notices within the Lynwood Unified School District is set to be released on Friday.
Individuals will be notified by Monday, either in person or by mail, that they may not have a job for the 2010-11 school year.
By state law, those reduction in force letters, must be delivered by March 15.
The actual list, according to interim Superintendent Patrick Leier, will be made available to the presidents of the Lynwood Teachers Association and the California Teachers Association by Friday.
In order to avoid any misinformation, Leier said the school district wants to make sure that everyone gets the information at the same time.
The school board, by a 4-1 vote last month, approved a resolution to lay off 184 certificated employees — 101 of which are classroom teachers.
Leier wants to assure the public that the list is based strictly on seniority.
“What happened last year won’t be happening this year,” Leier said, referring to a controversy over seniority lists that went out prior to last year’s cuts. “These cuts are based solely on seniority.”
Special education teachers are the only exception to the seniority rule, Leier said, especially those who have the appropriate credentials, and only because their positions are very difficult to fill.
“Special Ed teachers are the only positions with overriding consideration,” he said.
Leier also explained that there is a difference between teachers at the elementary school level and those who teach at the middle or high school level.
All elementary teachers are put into one category, that falls under one seniority group.
For teachers at high schools and middle schools, the district has to look at all “content credentials,” Leier said.
“Secondary teachers don’t have an all-content credential,” he said. “So it’s a little more complex … because we have to look at credentials within subject areas, and it’s within those subject areas that you rank by seniority.”
For example, he said, a junior math teacher cannot bump a senior math teacher. But neither could a junior math teacher bump a senior social studies teacher.
“That’s not how it works,” he said. “A social studies teacher who has been here 20 years, can’t bump a math teacher that’s been here for 10 years, because the social studies teacher doesn’t have the credential to teach math.”
Last year’s chaos over the seniority list also was compounded when the school board, Leier said, changed the master schedule and the graduation requirements.
“That’s why we did that first [this year],” Leier said about making the changes to the graduation requirements. “Last year, the reduction in force letters were sent out first, then when the graduation requirements were changed, the district realized they were going to need some of those teachers back … and then it was back and forth.”
Last year’s reduction in force process, Leier said, “seemed to be pretty clean. … It’s when the changes were made, that things got complicated.”
The board’s approval of a 4 by 2 schedule also didn’t help the situation, Leier added.
By going back to a six-period day at the secondary level, the district will be saving $4.2 million this year. The teachers kept to teach those extra classes are included in the 187 layoffs, Leier said. That number amounts to about 60 teachers.
This year, Leier said, the graduation requirements have been locked in, and therefore, the district knows exactly how many teachers will be needed to serve the graduation requirements.
Still, the final number is not set in stone.
As large as the number may seem, Leier said, it is still a conservative number, as the district is anticipating rescinding at least 30 of those notices within the next couple of months.
If the district could hold off on sending out the notices, it would, but by law “people have to be notified,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we won’t know what our exact budget will look like until the state approves its budget,” he continued. “Only then, will we know exactly how many of those letters we can rescind. It all depends on what our budget will look like. Hopefully, we will know for sure by August.”
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