A Message from the Superintendent and School Board President – Budget Crisis and Teacher Layoffs
Posted on 21. May, 2010 in News, Spotlight
Dear San Carlos Community,
We write to give you an update to a letter we wrote back in March regarding teacher layoffs in the San Carlos School District (SCSD). By law, the SCSD (and all California districts), had to give out preliminary layoff notices by March 15th to teachers whose positions may need to be eliminated in the 2010-11 school year. The deadline for sending out final notices was May 15th. The School Board, at its May 13th meeting, made the difficult decision to send out these layoff notices to 18 teachers.
The Board and District staff are continuing to discuss ways to deal with our budget shortfall, currently estimated at $2.85 million (12 % of our budget). Over the past twelve months we have cut nearly $1.3 million in administrative costs, programs and services. We have also launched new fee-for-service programs, and done belt tightening, to cover approximately $500,000 of the shortfall. All this was done without direct impact on core programs affecting regular classroom instruction. Unfortunately, we remain more than a million dollars short of what is needed to balance the budget. The reductions in teaching staff announced last week are part of what we must do to balance the 2010-11 budget.
Since the March 15 mandatory notification date, the District has found ways to preserve a certain number of teaching positions that we originally thought would need to be eliminated. In the end, we had to give final notification to 18 teachers, as compared to the 29 notified in March. Although we know the final notices will have a devastating affect on the employees being let go and the impact will be felt by the schools, we are thankful that we were able to reduce the number of layoffs.
As a result of these staff reductions, most class sizes will likely increase by two students. In a limited number of situations, classes may have an additional student or two. Unfortunately, however, these class size increases will not be enough to solve our budget problems. We are forced to also consider salary reductions for all District employees, in order to balance the budget. While larger class sizes is not the direction we would like to be moving, keeping class sizes as they are now would require us to consider even larger pay cuts for all employees.
The San Carlos School District Board of Trustees is deeply saddened by the need to lay off even one of our outstanding, committed teachers. We have the greatest professional staff anywhere! We appreciate the hard work of all of our teachers and other employees, and we wish the best for those whom we have been forced to let go. The Board, administration, teachers, and other staff will continue to work together to get us through this budget crisis and to deliver the superior educational experience that we in San Carlos have come to expect.
Please contact either of us if you have any questions regarding the budget situation. We also encourage everyone to attend upcoming board meetings to stay informed and be a part of the budget adoption process.
Sincerely,
Craig Baker Mark Olbert
Superintendent of Schools President, Board of Trustees
