LAUSD set to send layoff notices

EDUCATION: Loss of jobs would result in bigger class sizes, workload.

By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer

Updated: 03/01/2010 07:57:37 PM PST

Los Angeles Unified officials are expected to approve a mass mailing of nearly 4,700 layoff notices for teachers, administrators, counselors and nurses today as they work to close a crippling $640 million budget deficit.
Recommended by district financial staff in a report to be reviewed today by the school board, the move would virtually eliminate school nurses and librarians, increase all class sizes, including a high of up to 44 students in middle school, and boost counselor loads to 1,000 students each.
Layoff notices would also go out to nearly 1,000 janitors and maintenance workers and 520 school office workers, if the board approves the recommendations.
While the school district often rescinds layoff notices after they are sent on March 15, usually because it manages to find money or the unions make concessions, the sheer number of layoffs proposed for the second straight year points to the district's harsh financial reality.
No matter how much money the district can scrape together over coming months, Los Angeles schools Superintendent Ramon Cortines said some layoffs are inevitable, as are cuts to services.
"This is disruptive and doesn't provide stability for our schools, students or parents," Cortines said.
"But I have looked at every area in this district ... We are already down to the essentials."
District officials said the latest plan could be avoided if employee unions approve other cost-cutting plans like implementing furloughs or reducing the school year by a week.

Voters could also approve a new parcel tax that would increase property taxes by $100 per parcel. But even if voters approve the tax, which many doubt with an unemployment rate well into the double digits, it would raise only $92.5 million a year for four years.
Cortines said he's tried to keep cuts away from the classroom, "but there has to be somebody responsible for (financial) accountability in this district."
Most departments at the district's downtown headquarters are being asked to cut personnel by 10 to 20 percent, even after many departments were cut in half or altogether in 2009.
Remaining workers will be asked to move to a 10-month-per-year calendar - mirroring the work schedule of school-based employees and forcing them to take an 18 percent paycut.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state officials have lived up to their promises not to cut education budgets any further this year after slicing them deeply in 2009. But education funding still remains at the lower 2009 level for the most part, and without the help of federal stimulus money, which most districts have already spent, school districts have to make up those savings on their own.
Some union leaders still believe that the district has failed to make all possible savings from administrative costs.
A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said he would like to see all local district administrators paid to oversee day-to-day school operations eliminated.
"We are raising class sizes to the kind of numbers that make educating students nearly impossible," Duffy said.
"That is the insanity that this school board is going to put us through, and who is hurt the most once again? The students."
School-based employees also fear that these cuts will severely inhibit their ability to meet the most basic needs of students.
"Counselors are already absolutely overwhelmed. I cannot imagine having them take a case load of 1,000," said Lisa Lopez Betancourt, a counseling assistant at San Fernando High School.
Betancourt was demoted last year from her college counselor position at San Fernando and sees firsthand how strapped her colleagues are for time.
"It will be almost impossible to get the job done ... I don't understand how this could even be an option," she said.
Dana Rosenstock, a math teacher at Sutter Middle School in Winnetka, said class size increases at the middle school level will also be devastating for student achievement.
Over the past few years, while district students have made great gains in state standardized tests - although from a low base - middle school students have often lagged behind, and Rosenstock said increasing classroom sizes coupled with the decimation of counseling and nursing staffs would jeopardize achievement gains.
"This is a kiss of death," Rosenstock said. "They are setting us up for failure."
School board members echoed the sentiments of school-based workers.
"These cuts are not extreme, they are cataclysmic," said LAUSD boardmember Steve Zimmer, a former teacher.
"If we don't get some relief, public school education in Los Angeles will be unrecognizable."