District to Send 182 Teachers Layoff Notices

The Irvine school board, forced to slice $5 million from the next school year’s budget, have voted to send layoff notices to 182 teachers.

Trustees acted this week because initial layoff notices by law must be sent to teachers by March 15. Should Irvine voters approve a flat $95-per-parcel tax April 11, officials hope the $3 million generated would substantially reduce the number of teachers who would get final layoff notices by a May 15 deadline.

Otherwise, about 120 teachers eventually will lose their jobs because of the cuts, officials of the Irvine Unified School District said.

More teachers will receive pink slips than that because the district needs some leeway during layoff hearings.

Emotional school trustees said they had little choice but to cut inside the classroom, because three parcel tax increases have been rejected by voters since 1983.

“This is probably the most painful thing that the board has had to do,” trustees’ president Jeanne Flint said. “It is certainly not an action that anyone on this board is looking forward to, but it is our fiscal responsibility to do this.”

The cuts would be the most significant expected in the state this year, said Tommye W. Hutto, a spokeswoman for the California Teachers Assn., the state’s largest teachers union.

“That’s a very large number of teachers,” she said. “If that’s not the biggest one in Orange County [history], it’s very close.”