the district wrote in an agenda item related to the cuts.<\/a><\/p>\n Keep up with LAist.<\/p>\n
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Prior to the vote, Superintendent Jill Baker framed the proposed cuts with the historical context of significant enrollment declines, the expiration of funds following the Great Recession and COVID-19 pandemic that had allowed the district to develop a healthy reserve, uncertain federal and state dollars and low attendance numbers, for which the district is penalized \u2014 \u201ca really grave situation, fiscally,\u201d she said, one that many districts across California are grappling with.<\/p>\n
Baker walked board members through the significant efforts the district has made to manage costs, saving more than $47 million, including through significant central office reductions. Despite these efforts, it\u2019s still not enough, Baker said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe release of temporary certificated contracts is one way of reducing the number of employees without impacting permanent certificated employees,\u201d the district wrote in the agenda item.<\/p>\n
For those 515 certificated employees who will be notified that their contracts will end, it\u2019s a way that \u201cthe district can get away with letting teachers go without calling it a layoff,\u201d said Peder Larsen, vice president of the Teachers Association of Long Beach, which represents certificated employees in LBUSD.<\/p>\n
Some of them could be rehired, especially if their positions are in high demand, like science, math and special education teachers, Larsen said. Yet, it throws hundreds into a tailspin of uncertainty and fear, unsure if their jobs have definitively ended and how long they will have health coverage, he added.<\/p>\n
While he said the district has not officially announced that no permanent certificated employees will be cut (they have until March 15 to do so), he said he is \u201creading the tea leaves\u201d and predicting those permanent positions will be safe this year.<\/p>\n
In his comment to the board during public testimony, Larsen advocated for examining the money spent annually on consultants and contracts and urged the board and district to re-examine their priorities and \u201cchoose to protect the people who serve students every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n
On both votes, School Board Member Maria Isabel L\u00f3pez was the lone vote against the resolutions, voicing her opinion that some of these positions could have been saved if fiscal priorities had been different and major contracts had not been approved.<\/p>\n
Other board members acknowledged that the votes will change lives. \u201cThere\u2019s not one of us in this room that takes this lightly,\u201d said Board President Diana Craighead before voting in favor of the cuts. Board Member Doug Otto said he was voting to adopt the resolutions \u201csadly, reluctantly and necessarily.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Long Beach Unified Board of Trustees on Wednesday authorized the school district to end the employment of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[87491,7153,87492,131,133,132,37047,37318,1997,87493,87494],"class_list":{"0":"post-185588","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-contracted-jobs","9":"tag-job-cuts","10":"tag-lb-unified","11":"tag-long-beach","12":"tag-long-beach-headlines","13":"tag-long-beach-news","14":"tag-long-beach-unified","15":"tag-school-district","16":"tag-schools","17":"tag-teaching-jobs","18":"tag-temporary-contracts"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}