Teachers, staff face job uncertainty

Their teaching careers are in limbo.

As expected, the Eugene School District on Friday handed out letters labeled “Notice of Anticipated Layoff” to 108 teachers and other licensed staff with the least seniority as part of an estimated $24 million in cost-saving measures for the 2011-12 school year.

The 108 staff members represent 84 full-time positions in the district, the number of positions needed to be reduced so the district can increase its student-to-teacher staffing ratio by an average of four students at each school for the 2011-12 school year. Those positions represent about 11 percent of the district’s 996-person licensed staff. The layoffs are not official and are dependent on several things, including how much state school funding the district receives this spring; potential concessions obtained in the coming months from employee groups; and whether Eugene voters pass a city income tax for schools on May 17.

But for now, teachers such as Maryjo Clark at Twin Oaks Elementary School will be quickly forming a backup plan.

Clark has eight years of teaching experience, but is in only her third year teaching in the Eugene School District. She received her notice from Principal Larry Soberman on Friday; not that she was surprised, given that she was one of 124 teachers and support staff given a notice of possible layoff on Oct. 12.

“No,” said Clark, standing in her classroom where she teaches reading in the federally funded Title I program for students from low-income families. “I would say the big surprise was October. That one was the crying and ‘What am I going to do?’ ”

The district issued potential layoff notices in October because of a dispute with its two labor unions over whether to add back five paid school days that teachers and classified staff conditionally agreed to give up in negotiations last spring to help the district balance the 2010-11 budget. The layoffs would have happened in December, but the unions backed off before the end of October and did not challenge the district.

Cost-saving recommendations made by outgoing Superintendent George Russell then were debated by the school board for months before the board ultimately voted on a plan Feb. 2, setting layoff preparations in motion. Clark said she was emotionally prepared to receive her notice Friday. Still, it was not easy.

“I mean, it’s not pleasant,” said Clark, who has three daughters who attend Twin Oaks. “But I knew it was coming.”

Clark’s notice said if she is indeed laid off after this school year, she will remain on the district’s recall list for 27 months. She will plan to be a substitute teacher for the district and will put out “feelers” in the Bethel and Springfield school districts, both of which she has worked in.

“But who’s hiring?” Clark said.

Clark was one of two teachers Soberman had to give notices to Friday. Two others who work at the school, but split time between other district schools, were informed by other administrators, Soberman said.

“I think it’s devastating on a personal level for the people who are being laid off,” Soberman said. “And it’s disturbing for our school district that, because of the ratio increase, so much of our young, talented work force won’t be here next year.”

Twin Oaks was targeted for closure at the end of the 2011-12 school year in Russell’s recommendations, but the school board voted on Feb. 2 to table that closure for now, dependent on whether the board places a facilities bond measure on the May 17 ballot for school repairs and renovations. One of the renovations would be to expand McCornack Elementary School to accommodate Twin Oaks’ 200 students. If the bond measure does not happen or is not approved by voters, that could possibly leave Twin Oaks open beyond next school year.

For Charlemagne at Fox Hollow French Immersion School, Friday was a particularly brutal day for Principal Tom Maloney. Maloney had the unenviable task of giving notices to six of his 11 teachers because none of them has more than three years of teaching experience. However, Charlemagne teachers must be qualified to teach French. So it’s possible some of the six, or all of them, could be recalled this spring or summer depending on how staffing plans pan out at all the district schools after the financial situation fleshes itself out, Maloney said.

“These potential layoffs are unsettling,” Maloney said. “But, hopefully, things settle and we don’t have cuts as deep as this.” If the six teachers given notice Friday indeed lose their jobs, the district will have to try to find more experienced teachers throughout the district who are fluent in French and licensed to teach it to replace them, Maloney said.

“All I know is I fully intend to start next year with 11 teachers,” he said. “If it’s the 11 teachers I have now, that’s great.”

A “second wave” of notices will go out to more teachers in late March after schools figure out their staffing needs, district spokeswoman Kerry Delf said. Principals must turn in their staffing plans, based on the increased student-to-teacher staffing ratio, to the district by March 18. The second round of notices will be “notices of displacement,” Delf said. Those notices will inform some teachers that their positions are being eliminated at their schools. But because of the shrinking staffs anticipated at most schools, and the need to move teachers with seniority at Parker, Crest Drive, Coburg and Meadowlark elementary schools that are closing at the end of this year, some teachers will be assigned to another school depending on needs, Delf said.

The school board also voted on Feb. 2 to reduce the district’s administrative and classified staffs by about 10 percent, the equivalent of 62 full-time positions. Notices of anticipated layoff to classified staff with the least seniority will go out in early April, Delf said. When notices will go out to administrative employees with the least seniority is yet to be determined, she said. A second wave of notices to classified employees is expected to go out in early June, Delf said, again depending on the district’s ultimate financial picture for 2011-12.

And there could be another round of layoffs in late spring or early summer if the district’s budget is even bleaker than expected, Delf said.