The Seattle school district proposes to send pink slips to approximately 30 teachers and 40 classified employees this month in order to plug a $35 million budget deficit for the next school year.
At Wednesday’s school board meeting, the Seattle School Board passed a resolution giving Interim Superintendent Susan Enfield the authority to carry out layoffs, but asked the district to minimize them as much as possible. The district is required by state law to notify employees about layoffs by May 15. “This is a precautionary measure in case we need to actually lay people off,” said district spokesperson Teresa Wippel.
Wippel added that the number of proposed layoffs were “changing all the time and could go down or up depending on what the [state] legislature does. So I can’t confirm that we actually will be laying anyone off until the numbers are finalized.” Still, the number of layoffs recommended by the district this year appear to be fewer than what was proposed in 2009, when the district sent out 161 layoff notices to teachers and 58 to classified staff.
The district often ends up rehiring laid off teachers in the new school year. “It is our hope that they will be called back by the time school starts in the fall,” said Seattle teachers union vice president Jonathan Knapp. “However, that depends on who retires or moves away or changes careers.”
The school district expects to save $3 million from the proposed layoffs. Those on the layoff list include counselors, music, language, and arts teachers, family service workers, interpreters, and drug/alcohol intervention resource specialists.
Maybe they could lay off the entire athletic-related staff at Garfield High School, and maybe the other high schools as well. That would certainly save money, and prevent the reoccurrence of today’s revelations about star athletes benefiting from good grades in classes that never took place.
How much would reducing salaries of top administrators by 10% save? That money could go to save jobs.
Yeah, that’ll improve education. Getting rid of teachers when the number of students at public schools is on the rise. Great plan.
/sarcasm
What @1 said.
Starting with all the football teams.
personally not a single counselor, music, language, or arts teacher made the slightest impact in my life during highschool
and i smoke weed so obviously the drug intervention people shit the bed on that one
so fuck em, gotta start firing somewhere
Depressing and evil development, especially when wasteful government meets a cheapskate populace.
@5 – Your personal experience is the perfect basis for school district budget and termination policies! {/sarcasm]