Nurses, Counselors First to Face School Ax

More than a third of all San Diego city school nurses, all counselors who specialize in helping problem students and all career counselors will be given notice that their jobs could be gone after June 30 as part of district budget cuts.

City schools trustees indicated Tuesday that they will follow staff recommendations and vote next week to send layoff notices to 55 nurses and 18 career and special secondary-level counselors. Under state law, the district must notify these employees by March 15 in order to lay them off after June 30.

The layoff notices could be rescinded later in the spring or summer if unexpected money materializes or enough public pressure on trustees forces changes in district priorities.

The district is facing a $37-million shortfall between expected income and the almost $600 million needed to maintain all existing classroom and administrative services.

If all 73 people to be given notices lose their jobs, the district would save about $3.7 million, officials say.

The notices are expected to be only the first of many as painful decisions on program cuts that will continue through at least June.

On Tuesday, trustees also said they will move to save at least another $1 million a year by approving next week an early retirement incentive plan for teachers, principals and vice principals, and certain administrative managers in the central office.

Officials estimate that 900 of the district’s 6,200 teachers could be eligible because they have 15 years’ service and are at least 55 years old. They also estimate that 300--all of whom receive the maximum pay of $45,000 a year--will take advantage of the plan, which could pay an extra $200 to $439 a month beyond normal retirement benefits, depending on the annuity plan selected.

The positions of teachers who take early retirement are expected to be filled either by non-classroom resource teachers, whose own positions, in many cases, will be eliminated, or by new teachers hired at beginning salaries of $25,000 annually.

As a result, no current teachers will be given layoff notices, Supt. Tom Payzant said Tuesday, adding that normal resignations, deaths and retirement will create additional vacancies for non-classroom teachers to fill through transfers.

There is no estimate on how many of the 116 eligible principals, vice principals and managers--out of 432 total in the district--would take the early-retirement offer. Most of the central office management positions will not be filled.

Payzant announced that he will cut $6.5 million from his central office staff by eliminating 31 positions, as yet unidentified, through merging of the two divisions that oversee day-to-day school operations and classroom curricula.

Payzant called the nursing and counseling notices “options” as the district looks at severe budget cuts, saying his commitment “is to make initial cuts as far away from the regular classroom as I possibly can.”

But chief school nurse Judy Beck called the potential layoffs “somewhat ironic” in noting that the district has recently promulgated new policies and special pilot programs to promote better health as integral to successful learning.

“We feel we contribute directly to the classroom,” Beck said, adding that a full cut would double the caseload of remaining nurses, whom she said already provide the only medical attention for many lower-income district students.

Bill Crane, a regular counselor at Morse High School who will not be affected by the notices, told trustees Tuesday that the special counselors “are usually the last persons who deal with an at-risk student” through special help or home visits before such a student decides to drop out of school.

Both the nurses and counselors promised a fuller plea for their positions when the board takes final action on the layoff notices next week.