SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO : Schools to Send Out 284 Layoff Notices

The Capistrano Unified School District voted 5 to 2 this week to send preliminary layoff notices to 284 teachers and administrators by March 15.

District officials said that the notices are being sent out only to meet a state deadline for mailing them and that layoffs will occur only if the district fails to find another solution to balancing what could be a $10-million budget shortfall.

District Supt. James A. Fleming said the $10-million figure is an “absolute worst-case scenario” that would occur only if Gov. Pete Wilson’s budget proposals are approved without change by the state Legislature and if doomsayers are correct in saying “the governor’s budget is built upon faulty assumptions and overestimated projections,” Fleming said.

“There is so much that we don’t know about as far as what is going to happen with the state budget,” Fleming said. “Because of continuing student growth in the district and employee attrition, it would be my earnest hope that no one in this district will be subject to layoff or as few people as possible.”

Fleming recommended that trustees approve layoff notices for 90 first-year teachers and 64 other certificated positions, including 15 assistant elementary school principals and 27 high school physical education teachers, and a tentative plan to increase average class size by one student with those 154 positions eliminated.

But a majority of the board said they wanted more flexibility when making final budget decisions later this year and opted to also include 130 teachers hired for the 1990-91 school year in the layoff notification.

“You have to look at it in a cold-blooded stare even when you don’t want to,” Trustee E.G. (Ted) Kopp said. “For anybody in a business, the hardest thing to do is to lay people off. That’s our job, and it doesn’t make us popular.”

But Trustees Paul B. Haseman and Annette B. Gude said they objected to including teachers hired two years ago in the preliminary layoff list since the prospect of their actually being laid off was highly unlikely.

“I’m looking at the practicality of where we are going to make the cuts,” Haseman said. “I don’t see why we should exacerbate the sensibilities of our teachers. It’s nice to have flexibility, but let’s not scare people to death when we don’t need to.”

“There is no way that the teachers are going to be the only ones hit,” Gude added. “I don’t think all of these layoff notices are warranted. All it does is send the anxiety level way up.”

The district has until May to send out layoff notices to classified employees because state law requires that those workers need only receive 30-day notice.

Fleming said the district staff will present the board with an initial proposed list of budget reductions in April. The board will be presented with a final proposed budget for discussion and adopt a final 1992-93 budget on June 15 after a public hearing.