At its Feb. 11 meeting, the Santa Maria Joint Union School District School Board of Trustees hammered out a framework for determining how teachers will get laid off.
The district will lose almost $5 million over the next few years because of the state budget crisis. To cope with that financial hardship, the district is preparing to hand out pink slips to possibly dozens of employees.
“I can’t tell you for sure how many layoffs there will be,” district Superintendent Jeff Hearn said. “I can tell you that there will be people—teachers, administrators, and staff—laid off.”
When the board has to decide which teachers have to leave, members usually use seniority as a deciding factor. With so many potential layoffs at hand, however, there’s a chance that two teachers facing pink slips will have been around for the same amount of time. In such a case, Hearn said, the board would consider credentialing, bilingual certification, and whether or not the teacher is considered “highly qualified” by the federal government.
Teachers who hold a Cross-Cultural Language and Academic Development certificate would most likely be considered more valuable because of their language and communication skills. Also, teachers deemed “highly qualified” in accordance with the No Child Left Behind Act would be given more weight.
Hearn said other factors, including extracurricular involvement and experience, will also be considered.
While this isn’t the first time the district has been forced to create such criteria, Hearn said he’s never had to deal with such a high number of layoffs. The government, he explained, has put districts across the state in a very difficult and frustrating situation.
“Their inability or unwillingness to manage money appropriately has generated a downturn in the economy, and now we’re forced to deal with it at the local level,” he said. “This is the largest decline in revenue to public schools in the history of the state.
“I think that’s irresponsible, but there’s nothing I can do on this side besides telling people that it’s irresponsible,” he added.
He said the school district is in frequent contact with the state, as well as with Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee (R-San Luis Obispo) to demand that legislators come up with a budgetary remedy less detrimental to education.
“We don’t want education to be hit disproportionately in comparison to everything else,” he said, “but, frankly, we’re not very optimistic about our circumstances.”
This article appears in Feb 19-26, 2009.