70 Teachers Notified : Community Colleges Face Faculty Layoffs

Faculty layoff notices have arrived at the three San Fernando Valley campuses of the Los Angeles Community College District, school officials said Tuesday.

Preliminary termination notices were sent to 5 teachers at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, 10 at Valley College in Van Nuys and 1 at Mission College in Sylmar.

It is the second consecutive year that the district’s trustees have voted to lay off teachers to save money. The current proposal would save $1.7 million and is part of a series of cuts being considered in order to eliminate a $17-million deficit.

The trustees voted 4 to 3 last week to send layoff notices to 59 full-time faculty members throughout the district. However, 70 notices were mailed.

Districtwide the most notices, 17, went to East Los Angeles College. Los Angeles Trade Technical College received 12.

District officials said they hope state funds will be restored in the next few months, but that they decided to go ahead with the layoff announcements in case the money from Sacramento does not arrive.

A year ago the district sent notices to 157 faculty members. After some instructors were transferred to other departments and schools, only two faculty members lost their jobs.

“I got a layoff notice last year, and two days before classes started in September, I got called back to work,” said Tom Rosdahl, an auto mechanics teacher at Pierce.

Rosdahl said the uncertainity hurts enrollment.

“Students read all these stories about layoffs, and they don’t know if teachers are going to be here, so they don’t enroll,” he said.

Norman Schneider, a district spokesman, said, “We would not have done this if it were not for the financial strangulation we’re suffering from.”

Mission College may lose a physical education instructor. The affected Valley College departments would be art, music, nursing, physical education/health, respiratory therapy and journalism. At Pierce, the departments are agriculture, auto repair and nursing.

Schneider said several of the teachers who received notices had been hired on the same day, making it virtually impossible to determine seniority, on which layoff decisions are based.