Up to 3,000 Teachers Across State Receive Layoff Notices

By Duke Helfand, Erika Hayasaki and Claire Luna

May 16, 2003 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writers

Several thousand teachers across California received layoff notices Thursday from financially strapped school districts seeking to cut red ink.

As many as 3,000 pink slips, and perhaps more, were handed out by school systems in Pasadena, Oceanside, Sacramento, San Francisco and elsewhere -- although the numbers were far smaller than original estimates and many may be rescinded in the summer as districts get a better handle on their revenues.

About 30,000 of California’s estimated 300,000 teachers were warned in March that their jobs could be in jeopardy next school year. But the figure for actual layoff notices dwindled by Thursday’s deadline because districts received a somewhat brighter financial picture from the state and had cut nonteaching spending, including transportation, maintenance and athletic programs.

In addition, some districts are hoping private fund-raising and proposed parcel taxes will help improve the situation by the time students return in the fall.

There was no central clearinghouse for data on the teacher layoffs from the state’s more than 1,000 districts, but union leaders and education experts said they expected the number to reach several thousand and that any full count would take several weeks. An informal survey of districts suggested a number of 2,000 to 3,000 layoff notices.

Those teachers who received pink slips Thursday struggled to cope with the numbing prospect of being unemployed in the fall -- and possibly leaving the profession to sustain themselves.

“I have to feed my family,” said David Quinonez, a mathematics teacher at Alameda High School near Oakland for the past five years.

“At this point I have lost my job, so my quandary here is what do I do?” he said. Quinonez, a father of two, said he may have to return to his former job as a handyman, remodeling kitchens and bathrooms, to make ends meet. He ran the judo club at his school. “If I get eliminated, the [judo] program will die because there is no one else here that can teach it,” he said.

Other teachers whose jobs had been in jeopardy were relieved to learn they would not be laid off.

In Ventura, five teachers and three elementary school counselors who were sent warning notices in March are being kept, said Human Resources Director Richard Morrison. Additionally, 21 of 73 part-time and full-time “temporary” teachers who were initially told that they wouldn’t have positions in the fall have signed contracts for next year.

Among them is Katie Renger, 24, a first-year world history teacher at Foothill High School in Ventura. When district officials told her she would probably lose her job, she said she resigned herself to becoming a waitress or an advanced paper filer to wait out the crisis until she could return to the classroom. But after buying a house in October, she felt the extra stress of uncertainty, she said.

Now things have turned around for the better.

“My principal came into my room after school to tell me,” she said. “I just jumped on him, with a huge hug, screaming, ‘Thank you! Thank you!’ It was such a huge relief.”

Wayne Johnson, president of the California Teachers Assn. union, said he expected many of the layoffs to be rescinded because of staff attrition and enrollment growth.

“It’s going to be pretty much business as usual in September when all the hoopla is said and done,” he said. “Count then how many teachers lose their jobs. I think it’s going to be very few.”

Even where the number of layoffs was reduced, the anticipated losses felt like a blow for many districts under pressure to attract qualified teachers and raise test scores with dwindling resources.

Fewer teachers will lead to larger class sizes, especially in middle schools and high schools, officials said.

“We’re clearly moving backward,” said Supt. James A. Fleming of the Capistrano Unified School District, an Orange County school system that sent notices to 117 of the district’s 2,436 teachers, about half the losses originally envisioned. The layoffs include 53 third-grade teachers whose jobs will disappear as the district abandons the program that allows no more than 20 students per teacher in that grade next year to save money.

“It breaks my heart to see us in the position of having to erode the class-size reduction program,” Fleming said. “But we’re going to stay the course and do the best job we can, even with larger classes.”

The layoff notices came one day after Gov. Gray Davis released his revised state budget proposing to augment funding for primary and secondary public schools next year by more than $400 million over his more austere January plan-- but still cut an estimated at $1.5 billion from schools next year.

In his budget, Davis fully funded the state’s portion for class-size reduction in kindergarten through third grade. Officials in some districts said those funds would save smaller classes that were under the budget knife -- and the teachers who staff the classrooms.

But many other school systems said Davis’ revisions would not forestall the unpleasant task of gutting teaching staffs.

Supt. Jim Roberts of the Foresthill Union School District will have to lay off some of his veteran teachers, including those with a decade of experience, at his two-school district in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Notices went out to 11 full-time and part-time teachers, and those, combined with some cuts last year, would reduce the former teaching staff of 34 about by a third, he said.

Four of the targeted teachers have been recognized by Placer County as Teachers Who Make a Difference, the equivalent of being named Teacher of the Year.

After a decade of effort on assessment and accountability, “it’s disheartening to see our hard work unravel,” he said.

Davis administration officials acknowledged the problems caused by the potential loss of so many teachers. The officials said the revised budget gives districts maximum flexibility to use their reserve funds to make up for other cuts and keep teachers

“We’ve done everything we could to avoid teacher layoffs,” said Erik Skinner, an assistant secretary for education. “To the extent that any teachers are laid off, it will clearly be disruptive to schools. It will be a stumbling point in terms of continuing our progress in education reforms.”

School districts this week abided by seniority rules that target the newest teachers first. But with so much money to be trimmed, even veteran teachers were vulnerable, including Jan Forni, 45, who works at Thomas Page School in Cotati, north of San Francisco.

She was still hanging around her school at 5 p.m. Thursday, stalling because she didn’t want to go home and open her layoff notice, which she was told to expect in the mail. She started crying over the phone when a reporter asked about it.

“I am panic-stricken at this point because I have student loans. I finished school five years ago, and I have two kids in college. I am figuring out if I should pull them out of school or not,” Forni said.

Previously, she worked as a paralegal, as well as in the mortgage business and in preschools. Her husband works as a bartender, but Forni said her family depends on her income and benefits.

The pain of layoffs will be felt in urban, suburban and rural districts alike.

The financially stressed Oakland school system, already fighting to remain solvent, sent layoff notices to 400 of its 3,300 teachers.

The Sacramento city school system gave bad news over the last several weeks to 270 of its 3,000 teachers. San Francisco notified 272 of the district’s 4,000 teachers, nurses and counselors and Oceanside told 112 of 1,200 teachers.

Seventy-eight of Pasadena’s 1,200 teachers were told that they won’t be coming back, but in March, 200 had received warnings. Officials there said a lot of the cuts can be attributed to declining enrollment in lower grades at elementary schools. Other teaching positions were saved because the district instituted a hiring freeze, cut administration positions and offered an early retirement program.

The teaching corps in Garden Grove and Long Beach were preserved by similar cuts.

Long Beach Unified began trimming spending two years ago and is now looking to hire teachers for math, science and special education classes and attracting candidates from districts that are letting employees go.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the state’s largest with 767,000 students, also will not lay off any teachers and is focusing its spending reductions on administration, supplies, maintenance and on increased class sizes. The district will hire as many as 3,500 teachers for the coming school year to make up for attrition among its more than 40,000 teachers.

Across the state, many laid-off teachers are likely to be rehired to replace those who retire or resign.

That is encouraging news for kindergarten teacher Elizabeth Weatherly, who received her layoff notice Thursday from Reilly Elementary in Mission Viejo.

Weatherly said she is confident that her position will be restored by the Capistrano Unified School District. “I’m holding out,” she said. “I’m hoping for a happy ending.”

Times staff writers Cara Mia DiMassa, Errin Haines, Jenifer Ragland, Lee Romney and Kristina Sauerwein contributed to this report.