Newport-Mesa District to Cut 209 Employees

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District will lay off 58 teachers and 151 support personnel in the next few weeks, district officials said Wednesday.

The decision, made Tuesday evening by the district’s Board of Trustees, is designed to ward off a shortfall in the 1988-89 budget that could reach as high as $7 million, according to Supt. John Nicoll.

Board members also voted to eliminate physical education and vocal music programs in the district’s elementary schools, and to cut some English, mathematics and social studies courses offered in grades 7 through 12, Nicoll said. Junior and senior high school electives such as photography would also be eliminated, he said.

Nicoll said the criteria for determining who will be laid off “boils down to credentials, to seniority, to program needs. . . . People who are in a subject area that’s being eliminated are more vulnerable to termination.”

He said 13 teachers will be laid off through the cuts in physical education and vocal music programs. Also, 10 English teachers, who were hired just three years ago, will be laid off.

Nicoll blamed the district’s economic problems on insufficient increases in state education funding. During the 1987-88 school year, the district received a 2.54% increase in state funding, and expects to receive about 3.8% during the 1988-89 year, he said.

“It takes 5% (increases each year) just to stay even,” he said Wednesday.

Asked why the budget cuts could not have come in other areas, Nicoll said that personnel costs accounted for more than 90% of the district’s budget. “We can’t cut out our insurance bills,” he said. “We can’t cut out our utility bills. We can’t cut out the things we have to buy.”

The 151 support personnel targeted for layoffs are 10-month employees whose last day on the job would be June 23, the final day of the school year, Nicoll said.

“We will be making additional reductions in support services among the 12-month employees too,” he said, noting that the 10-month employees had to be told first because state law requires that they be notified 30 days before their last day of work.

Nicoll said that many of the laid-off employees may eventually be reinstated, but he added that he did not know when.

“Nobody will find out anything until we find out what happens with the state budget,” he said. “Until they make up their minds how much they are going to fund us, I don’t know.”

Spokesmen for the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers, the union for teachers in the district, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.