Orange : Union President Warns Against Teacher Layoffs

The president of the Orange school district teachers’ union Monday warned the school board not to lay off teachers to help balance a $1.5-million deficit in the district.

Wilma Wittman, president of the Orange Unified Education Assn., in a statement prepared for a special board meeting Monday night, told the school board members that their proposal to lay off up to 34 teachers at the end of this year would be harmful to the students.

The board previously had said it would send layoff notices to at least 34 teachers this month because of the district’s deficit. The deficit stems from budgetary underestimates earlier this year and rapidly declining student enrollment, school district officials have said.

The Orange Unified school board has said that in addition to teacher layoffs, it must close up to four elementary schools this summer. The proposed closures include two of the three schools in affluent Villa Park, and residents of that community recently expressed outrage at the proposal.

The school board is scheduled to vote on school closures at its March 21 meeting. It voted Feb. 21 to send the layoff notices to teachers.

Wittman, however, said the layoffs would be “devasting to a program (of education) that should be geared toward maintaining excellence,” and would eliminate the vocal music program from the elementary schools. “In view of the state’s emphasis on putting fine arts into the schools, these (proposed) cuts would be unrealistic,” Wittman said.

Wittman also charged that the layoffs would cripple the school district’s libraries. “They are talking about reducing the media specialists to half time, and that would mean reducing the school libraries to being open only half a day,” she said. “We (in the union) will not tolerate their trying to operate the library with only an aide.”

She said the cuts also would hurt the bilingual education and high school counseling programs.

“Let’s not ask them (the community) to accept the cuts, but let’s put together a program with business and community leaders to financially support these activities,” said Wittman. “We believe the community should be given the opportunity to support the program, but you have to give them something good to support.”

In a related development Monday, Michael W. Dombrowski, chairman of the Orange Unified Citizens’ Steering Committee for Better Schools, said the committee has not recommended the three school-closure options now being considered by the school board. A district spokeswoman last week said the three options, all of which include closing one or more Villa Park schools, came from the citizens’ steering committee.

But Dombrowski said Monday that the school district staff prepared the options, not the steering committee. He said the citizens’ group is merely studying the staff’s recommendations, and the committee will make its own report April 11.