Students and Parents Rap Plans to Lay Off Teachers

About 100 Fountain Valley High School students and their parents told Huntington Beach Union High School District trustees Tuesday night that planned teacher layoffs will jeopardize quality education in their schools.

Because of rapidly declining enrollment, district officials say that they will be overstaffed by 54 teachers next year and that some temporary teachers will have to be laid off.

On Friday, about 300 students at Fountain Valley High School staged a demonstration because they said the cutbacks will remove some of their school’s best teachers.

“When you get rid of your star player in sports, you jeopardize the outcome of the game,” said Jason Hassay, 17, an honors student at Fountain Valley. “When you take our best teachers out, you take the risk of lowering our test scores.”

Declining Enrollment Blamed

Mikel Matto, 17, also a Fountain Valley honors student, told trustees: “As students, we hold our education and our teachers very dear. As a student, the fact that these decisions (to lay off teachers) are being made without regard to our opinions is very disturbing.”

The layoffs are a product of declining enrollment, administrators say. This school year, the district had 1,380 fewer students and projections for next fall show that there will be 800 fewer, officials said. The loss of each student means that the district receives $3,219 less in state funding.

The district must cut $11.5 million out of its budget in the next 5 years and has announced a series of changes, cutbacks and economic measures, of which this is the latest.

“This board is responsible for balancing that budget, and when you lose that many students you don’t have a need for that many teachers, and the first teachers to go are the last teachers hired,” Trustee Bonnie Castrey said.

While the district will be 54 teachers overstaffed, trustees were told Tuesday that only 32 will have to be laid off because the rest will be absorbed through attrition. Only temporary teachers will be affected by the layoffs, an administrator said.

Students at Fountain Valley were protesting the change in status of 18 teachers, including an award-winning biology teacher, a dance teacher, the junior varsity swim coach and a music teacher.

‘Substitute Teacher Pools’

But district officials say that those teachers who are considered probationary instructors and have not yet gained tenure will not be laid off. Instead, they will be placed in “substitute teacher pools.” It is not clear yet at which schools some of these teachers will be assigned.

Students and parents at Tuesday’s meeting said that is small consolation because placing the teachers in the pools will remove them from their academic specialties.

Trustees could offer no solutions to the complaints that students voiced at the meeting but stressed that they care about retaining quality programs.

“It’s extraordinarily difficult (to cut teachers) because the areas you’re talking about (dance and music programs) are very near and dear to the board,” Castrey said. But she said that placing teachers in substitute pools at least keeps them in the district.

Trustee David Warfield criticized the students for staging Friday’s demonstration. “I feel that the walkout was unnecessary,” he told the audience. “This forum, talking to the board like you are tonight, that will get the job done.”

The only parents and students who spoke were from Fountain Valley High. Other schools and the teacher’s union have not protested the impending layoffs.

Doug Scott, president-elect of the union, said that the district is abiding by its contract with the District Educators Assn., the teachers union. The contract makes a clear distinction between tenured teachers and temporary ones, he said.

“The contract we have says there will be no reduction in the work force among permanent teachers,” Scott said. “No one who is permanent will be let go.”

Temporary teachers, Scott said, are hired with the condition that they may have to be let go at the end of the school year because of the district’s financial situation.

“It’s real sad, but that’s the fact of life, or rather the fact of politics, because that’s what it comes down to,” he said. “It’s the political decisions in Sacramento that are affecting us.”

One Fountain Valley teacher who is likely to join the substitute pool next year is Michael Kurth, a biology teacher whose classes have won numerous academic awards. Kurth, 28, has been at Fountain Valley High School for 3 years, but he is not tenured.

Kurth said he is a probationary teacher, the status in between temporary and tenured. “It’s unclear what happens to those in the sub pools if not selected to teach somewhere else in the district,” Kurth said. “I’ll be honest with you. I don’t understand it (how the substitute pool arrangement will work). I might be picked up by another high school with a teacher shortage. If not, I don’t know.”