School District Notifies 20 Employees of Potential Layoff

Twenty employees of the have been notfied that their services might not be required for the 2011-12 school year, the district said Tuesday.

Pam Conklin, the district’s human resources director, made visits to each affected employee over the course of several days and met a required March 15 deadline to notify those workers whose jobs might be cut.

The California Teachers Association estimates that tens of thousands of teachers will lose their jobs over the next few months.

Conklin, who will take over next month as the interim superintendent when Jan La Torre-Derby retires, said the number of employees receiving notice about their questionable job status is similar to the number from the past few years. Last year, everyone who got a March 15 letter was hired back before the start of the current school year.

However, with the budget unrest in Sacramento and a ballot measure being drawn up by the Legislature that could make or break the education budget, Conklin said it’s too early to predict how the process will pan out this spring and summer. On Monday, thousands of protesters went to Sacramento to advocate for the chance to vote on Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed tax extensions that would raise about $12 billion.

“Anyone who is in education is feeling the replications of a state budget that has been in turmoil for multiple years,” she said. “The cuts for us in NUSD have truly been at the district office level. But you see a lot of the people here working hard to maintain a happy attitude, and I commend every one of them. There is truly amazing work getting done despite a reduced number of people here and a higher workload. We’re extremely fortunate to have those kind of people working at the district office.”

As for the prospect of further cuts if voters turn down a proposed statewide measure for education funding, Conklin said, “It’s nothing new … it’s been going on for years and years, and sadly it’s likely to continue because of the budget projections for the year to come.”

 The March 15 letters to out to employees who are being laid off as a budget reduction or were probationary employees who were not recommended to be kept on as permanent employees, Conklin said. On March 1, the district trustees voted to trim 24.8 full-time equivalents. There are a few retirements coming, so 20 people were affected by that vote.

By May 15, the district is required to notify those employees whether the layoff is official or not. But even if an employee receives that letter, it doesn’t mean that person won’t have a job in the fall.

“Sometimes we get information from the state that allows us to revise our budget and perhaps rescind some or all of those March 15 letters,” Conklin said.

According to Louis Freedberg of California Watch, districts across the state appear to have little confidence that a special election Brown wants to call will actually happen, and if it does, whether voters will support it.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said tax extensions would raise $4.5 billion for K-12 schools. But for now, most districts are issuing pink slips based on the assumption that they won't have those funds to keep teachers on their payroll, California Watch reported.

The NUSD trustees approved more than $2.3 million in cuts on March 1. Conklin said retirement incentives have not been offered to employees at or near retirement age.

“We offer it when it is a financial benefit to the district,” she said. “We have to look at the employees who are eligible to retire and the likelihood that they would need to be replaced. It worked out this year that the number that would need to be replaced was quite high, so it’s not a benefit to offer it as an incentive.”

The district has about a dozen employees retire each year, and it was closer to 15 the past two years, Conklin said.