SINGING OUT

The sound of music is flowing from the voices of the South Eugene High School concert choir class, and Kimberly McConnell is in her element.

“I need a wai-ter with some wa-ter for my daugh-ter,” the 50-some students quickly sing over and over, as they warm up their voices Wednesday for the fifth-period class.

This is McConnell’s love. This is her life. And, barring some sort of musical — and mathematical — miracle, these are likely her final days at her dream job.

“Twenty-five years, heart and soul,” a teary-eyed McConnell, who joined the Eugene School District in 2006 after two decades of teaching choir at other Oregon high schools and Lane Community College, said before Wednesday’s class.

McConnell, 49, is one of 122 teachers and other licensed staff in the district who have thus far received tentative layoff notices because of the district’s record $21.7 million budget shortfall for the 2011-12 school year. Most of the notices, more than 100, were sent at the end of February. McConnell’s came on May 17 — ironically, the day that city voters soundly defeated a city income tax for schools that would have provided $12 million annually to the Eugene district for four years, to keep class sizes down by limiting layoffs.

While the pain is being felt by teachers far and wide, McConnell might be the only pink-slipped teacher whose students are so outraged that they have created a Facebook page to try and save her job.

“Keep Kimberly McConnell at South Eugene H.S.!!!,” a page created last week on the online social networking site, had 720 members as of Wednesday.

“Such bull poo,” South senior Michael Stevens wrote on the page last week. “You wouldn’t replace a Varsity Football head coach, if they were as successful as Kimberly, with an elementary school P.E. teacher. So why should Kimberly be replaced with an elementary music teacher?”

McConnell’s position has been offered to an elementary school teacher with more seniority whose own position was lost in the district’s restaffing shuffle, South Eugene Principal Randy Bernstein said. The rules of seniority are set forth in the contract between the district and its teachers union, the Eugene Education Association.

McConnell, who splits her time teaching choir at South and at Spencer Butte Middle School, might also be the only laid-off teacher in the district who has e-mailed the parents of her students, asking them to do something on her behalf. Last week, she encouraged parents to keep their children in choir so it doesn’t appear that there are insufficient numbers of music students and classes to teach.

“DROPPING CHOIR WILL HURT MY OPPORTUNITY TO STAY,” McConnell wrote in the e-mail.

Some who received it sent the e-mail to others, who reminded that many teachers, not just McConnell, are being affected.

“While this is sad for all concerned, please remember that over 100 other teachers have also received their notice, myself included,” wrote Kristina Brooks, a teacher at the Academy of Arts and Technology at Jefferson. “Our small middle school is set to lose 5 of 8 teachers, 2 of them in math, 1 science, 1 language arts — all essential core subjects. This devastating process is based on seniority and license and, we have been informed, cannot be influenced by parental pressure.”

But McConnell said she is “flabbergasted” at how someone who applied to teach choir at a high school with one of the best choir programs in the state — South placed second in state competition earlier this month — is going to be replaced by someone who most recently taught elementary school music.

“It just looks like a discrepancy to me,” McConnell said.

Her students, and many of their parents, agree.

“I was absolutely appalled when I got the news, because she’s the most qualified person who could ever do this job,” senior Dylan Stasack, who will attend the University of Michigan to study music in the fall, said after class on Wednesday. “If I hadn’t been in the program with Kimberly, I never would have gotten so many opportunities to succeed.”

But the reason McConnell’s last day at South will likely be June 17 is not because South is cutting music. It’s because of the district’s annual “bumping” process, which this year is more torturous than ever given the record budget shortfall and thus the record number of teacher layoffs it will have to make.

Through the district’s “displacement” process, teachers whose positions are eliminated by annual restaffing, but who have seniority, can apply for positions they are qualified for that open up at other schools because of layoffs.

Jeralynn Beghetto, the district’s human resources administrator, would not comment Wednesday on individual positions, or McConnell’s situation specifically.

“We do whatever is possible to try and match them up,” Beghetto said of teachers and positions created by the displacement process. “We looked as much as we could at matching band to band, choir to choir, and strings to strings,” she said. “And there comes a point in seniority when that’s no longer possible.”

The district has to play by the rules created by the Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission, which licenses teaching in certain curriculum areas, and by the district’s contract with the teachers union, Beghetto said. Oregon school teachers are licensed to teach music from kindergarten through high school, not specifically to teach choir or band or orchestra at the high school level. So an elementary school music teacher could fill a high school choral director position as long as they are licensed to teach music at the K-12 level, Beghetto said.

While they rejected the city income tax for schools, voters last week did approve a $70 million facilities upgrade bond measure, which will allow the district to use $1 million a year for instructional purposes in the district’s general fund that would normally be used for maintenance and repairs on buildings.

McConnell said the district should use that money to restore music program staffing at elementary schools, so positions like hers could be kept safe. But the district’s budget committee already voted Monday, as part of approving the 2011-12 budget, to use $800,000 of the money to pay salary and benefits for 11.5 full-time licensed staff and instructional assistant positions at schools that have higher populations of students in need of extra support because of academic, economic and social challenges. The other $200,000 will go to operational supports such as finance and human resources.

Bernstein, the principal at South, tries to see the bigger picture.

“While it’s certainly problematic that we’ll have somebody teaching choir at South without the appropriate skill set, it’s also problematic that some schools won’t have music at all,” he said.