ORANGE : School Assistants Face Losing Jobs

As many as 72 part-time assistants in the Orange Unified School District could lose their jobs next month under a budget-cutting measure expected to be approved tonight by the school board.

Some of the 59 instructional and 13 school community assistants are likely to be placed in other jobs in the district, spokeswoman Gayle Wayne said Wednesday, but a yet-to-be determined number of those who cannot be reassigned will lose their jobs in 30 days.

Wayne said the layoffs are necessary because the district is cutting money for “resource teachers,” who handle a variety of special duties and assist in the schools’ operations. Rather than lose those teachers, she said, several schools have decided to pay them out of funds usually set aside for assistants.

“Each site made its own decision,” Wayne said. “Some decided to spend the money for special resource teachers. They used categorical funds that had supported an instructional aide at that site.”

Instructional and community assistants help teachers and others, Wayne said. Bilingual assistants, for example, may help teachers in classrooms that have high percentages of students who do not speak English.

The aide jobs to be eliminated under the resolution were from one to five hours a day, Wayne said.

Although the aides will only be laid off from schools that choose to keep their resource teachers, Wayne said, district officials have not determined which schools will be affected. Under the contract with the Orange Unified Education Assn., assistants can “bump” other assistants in the same position but with less seniority out of their jobs at other schools.

“We will have a bumping process,” Wayne said. Some of the assistants “will still be working but perhaps not at the school they’re currently assigned to, and some whose names are not on the (layoff) list will be forced out,” she said.

Wayne said the school board, which has been grappling with financial difficulties for several years, is expected to approve the district’s $103.5-million budget tonight.