In a meeting closed to the public, the Sacramento City Unified School District decided to lay off hundreds of workers amidst its budget deficit.<\/p>\n
Around 400 positions will be cut, including teachers, paraprofessionals, and counselors. Three members of the board were not present during the 3-1 vote.<\/p>\n
Some positions, such as social workers, nurses, counselors and school psychologists, were unaffected, but could be considered again by the full board at a future meeting.<\/p>\n
Alexander Goldberg, communication director for Sac Unified, said many of the classroom positions listed for removal are already vacant and most of the classroom positions that are filled are on the layoff list as part of their normal budget development process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn other words, fiscal solvency plan, or not, they would be on a layoff list largely because of enrollment projections at various schools,\u201d Goldberg said. \u201cThis is a process that every district goes through. I just want to make this very clear because throughout the fiscal solvency process we have communicated to families that our intention is to keep cuts away from the classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goldberg added this is the preliminary layoff notice and not everyone who receives a notice at this point will be laid off when they finalize the list in May.<\/p>\n
The Sacramento Teacher\u2019s Association President Nikki Milevsky said important\u00a0 information the board received on Feb 12\u2019s meeting was how many new positions opened during the budget development process and how many retirements and resignations the district already has for next year.<\/p>\n
Milevsky said all the information has to be added together and analyzed before layoff notices are issued.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, if they are closing 21 elementary teacher positions but adding 5 new ones at a different school, then 25 elementary teachers have already put in retirement\/resignation notices, no one in that category will receive a layoff notice,\u201d she said. \u201c Instead, the district will need to be hiring more.\u201d<\/p>\n