PLACENTIA : Trustees OK Layoffs to Cut Budget Deficit

Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District trustees, faced with cutting more than $7 million from next year’s budget, plan to lay off about 108 teachers, administrators and counselors, district officials said this week. The district’s Board of Education voted 4 to 1 to authorize the layoffs, which would slash an estimated $5.2 million from the budget deficit. In what has become a spring ritual, preliminary layoff notices will be sent by March 15.

“We don’t feel good about this,” said Supt. James O. Fleming at the school board’s Tuesday meeting. “We don’t know how we will operate the district with all these major cuts.”

The school district, which spends 84% of its $96-million budget on teacher salaries and benefits, relies almost totally on state funding. But because districts are required to produce a balanced 1992-93 budget before the state Legislature approves the state’s budget, local school officials must prepare for the worst-case scenario.

If the budget picture remains bleak for the next two months, the district will send final layoff notices by May 15.

The projected loss of 108 positions would deeply hurt the schools’ ability to provide traditional services, officials said.

The proposed elimination of 11 physical education instructors, they said, would cripple athletic programs at the elementary school level.

The district would also lose 10 counselors, 10 teachers at grades lower than sixth, and more than 50 teachers in the fields of science, mathematics, language arts, social sciences and special education.

“There is not a whole lot of choice when you anticipate losing $7 million from the budget,” said Tim vanEck, assistant superintendent of personnel services. “A lot of very good people are losing jobs.”

Should the planned layoffs become implemented in full, the district’s overall staff-to-student ratio will rise to about 33 students to 1 teacher from the current 29-to-1 ratio.

The layoffs account for more than $5 million in cuts to a budget that officials seek to slash by more than $7 million. The district plans to come up with the rest of the cuts by curbing maintenance and utility costs and possibly eliminating additional positions not in teaching or management at the district’s 28 schools.

“We are making a decision today not knowing what funding is going to be from the state and not knowing what we can save” in other cost-cutting measures, Fleming said. “Given where we are today we need to make our best guess.”

Officials said that if this round of layoffs proves to be too deep, the district can reinstate teachers and administrators as funds become available. But the district may not make additional layoffs to narrow any unexpected widening of the deficit.

Last year, the district sent out 132 preliminary layoff notices in March. But when the state approved its budget in late July, the district was able to reinstate 70 teachers and administrators.

The layoffs were based simply on seniority in identified areas, so many of those teachers who were reinstated last year are back on the list this year.