PLACENTIA / YORBA LINDA : Deadline Extended on Teacher Layoffs

Teachers in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District have agreed to extend the deadline for receiving layoff notices by one month, district and teachers’ association officials said.

The extension was approved last week by the Assn. of Placentia Linda Educators to give the district more time to determine how much of the $84 million it had in the bankrupt county’s investment pool will be recovered.

“The intent of extending until April 15 is to mitigate the impact to employees by having the number of notices trimmed down,” said association President Randy Dennis. “The district told us it could reduce by two-thirds the number of employees” to whom notices would have to be issued.

If the district were forced to meet the March deadline, it would have to create a broad list of employees receiving the notices, said Tim Van Eck, assistant superintendent for employee services.

“I don’t want to speculate on how many, but the list would have to be much broader than what we might need to eventually do when we see the county plan,” Van Eck said. “If we had to work in the blind we would have to include enough teachers to cover every possible scenario that the county could present.”

State law requires that layoff notices be issued by March 15 unless the association agrees to an extension.

The last time the district issued layoff notices in large numbers was in March, 1992, when the state Legislature and the governor were unable to pass a budget until late summer. Then, based on the information available at the time, the district assumed it would have a $6-million deficit and issued more than 100 layoff notices.