VISTA: VUSD to consider layoff notices to at least 167 teachers

STACY BRANDT - sbrandt@nctimes.com
February 12, 2010 8:50 pm

School officials in Vista will consider Thursday sending preliminary layoff notices to at least 167 educators and eliminate an additional 95 temporary teaching jobs as part of the latest round of proposed spending cuts in the financially strapped district.

Vista Unified School District employees who could receive a pink slip include at least 111 classroom teachers, seven counselors, six music teachers, an assistant principal and 23 resource teachers.

Getting a notice doesn't necessarily mean workers will lose their jobs. State education code requires school districts to let teachers know by March 15 if there's a chance they'll be laid off in the next school year. Final layoff notices are sent out in May, but districts sometimes add back workers even after those notices are sent.

Still, for the teachers who get a pink slip, it's a stressful situation, said Barbara Franklin, vice president of the Vista Teachers Association.

"You're in limbo sometimes from March until June," she said. "The morale is already low. ... This just puts one more thing on their shoulders."

District officials also plan to let 95 temporary and hourly teachers go at the end of the school year. Those teachers are on one-year contracts.

If all of the permanent and temporary employees were let go, it would equal about 20 percent of the district's roughly 1,300 teachers, Franklin said.

Fewer teachers would mean larger classes for those who keep their jobs, though increased sizes would need to be negotiated into the teachers' contract.

The district is facing an estimated shortfall of $18.3 million for the 2010-11 school year.

Trustees will vote on more than $7 million in spending cuts in a meeting set to start Thursday at 7 p.m. at Foothill Oak Elementary School, 1370 Oak Drive.

The district also plans to take $3 million from its rainy-day fund and will try to negotiate $8.2 million in cuts with its two employee unions to balance next year's budget.

District officials offered no specifics on how they arrived at that $8.2 million figure in a tentative cost-cutting plan approved last month.

The plan also included laying off support staff, eliminating some arts funding, cutting some administrative positions, reducing some school site money and eliminating middle school sports.

District officials have said pay cuts will be necessary to balance the budget, because roughly 85 percent of the money the district spends goes to employee salaries and benefits.

The district declared recently that contract talks with its teachers union were at an impasse, with a key issue whether teachers would have to take a 2 percent pay cut and work five fewer days each year. Administrators and board members have said they expect everyone in the district to take the same hit once an agreement is reached.

District and union officials plan to meet with a mediator starting next week. Negotiations have not yet started with the union that represents the district's 1,000 or so support employees.

The board won't approve a final budget until June but must make cuts now in order to meet certain deadlines.

District officials expect to spend roughly $176 million next year, down from an estimated $215 million this year.

Revenue is declining for districts across California, as state officials cut education funding to deal with their own budget woes. The situation in Vista Unified has been worsened by declining enrollment over the past several years, since state funding is based on attendance.

The district employs roughly 2,400 people to serve about 23,000 students in Vista and eastern Oceanside.

Call staff writer Stacy Brandt at 760-901-4009.

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