Sherwood School District cuts teaching jobs

Sherwood — The Sherwood School District unanimously adopted a budget Tuesday for the 2012-13 fiscal year that will eliminate 8.5 teaching positions.

The adopted budget is the same as the budget proposed in April with the exception of adjusting for the collaboration grant, said Chief financial officer Wayne Lowry.

The state grant, awarded in May, will add $332,000 to special revenue funds and will be primarily used for professional development around the new Common Core State Standards.

Although the general fund for next school year is at $38.7 million, compared with $37.8 million in 2011-12, the district had to make cuts. Costs, including health insurance, PERS, step increases and inflation have gone up while revenue has remained flat, according to Lowry.

Three elementary school and 3.5 middle school teaching positions will be eliminated. At the high school, two jobs that were to be added to keep up with growth have been scrapped.

After the budget meeting in May, the district pursued contract negotiations with teachers, administrators and classified staff for two more furlough days in addition to the ones outlined in the proposed budget.

The certified association declined to take those days, which would have allowed the district to keep three teaching jobs that will be cut.

The adopted budget includes two furlough days over the summer, July 5-6, for administrators and year-round staffers, in addition to the three furlough days in place for all employees during the school year.

Overall, the district will experience $1.34 million in reductions for 2012-13.

– Findley Merritt
Follow @SherwdReporter

Teaching jobs scarce

Largely due to only five people retiring at the end of the 2011-12 school year, the Wilkes County schools currently have significantly fewer vacant teaching positions than normal for this time of year.

Wilkes school officials cited economic factors, particularly a lack of jobs elsewhere, as a reason for a decline in the number of certified teachers retiring or resigning this year and last year.

There also is a younger generation of teachers in classrooms now, at least in some schools.

C.C. Wright Elementary School Principal Jeffrey Johnson said 17 of the 28 teachers at his school have been working full time in a classroom for four years or less.

 Johnson said only six teachers retired at North Wilkesboro Elementary during his three years as principal there before he started at C.C. Wright last year. He said all of the other teachers at North Wilkesboro had been working full time in classrooms five years or less.

One of the two current teacher vacancies at C.C. Wright resulted from a teacher getting married and moving to South Carolina and the other one resulted from a promotion to the school system’s central office.

Johnson said that when he was assistant principal at Mountain View Elementary School about five years ago, about half of the teachers had 20 years or more of experience.

Mountain View Elementary Principal Westley Wood said that with years of classroom experience at the school now averaging around 10-12, Mountain View doesn’t have as many veteran teachers now.

Johnson said he received about 60 applications for the two job openings after posting them just for four days. Most of the applicants graduated from college over a year ago and had worked part-time as tutors while trying to find jobs as full-time teachers.

He noted that six of his teachers at C.C. Wright plan to take six-week maternity leaves in the upcoming school year, thus creating chances for others to gain classroom experience in temporary jobs.

Johnson and Ryan McCreary, who just finished his first year as Central Wilkes Middle School’s principal, both said they have been very impressed with the quality of applicants for teaching jobs at their respective schools.

Central Wilkes has three teacher vacancies, including two from retirements and one from a move out of county.

Sharon Shoupe, in her second year as North Wilkesboro Elementary principal, said she was bombarded by job applications within minutes after the school’s one open teaching position, which is a newly-created job, was posted.

Mrs. Shoupe said that as a way of encouraging applicants by explaining how things can change, she sometimes tells them that there was a shortage of teachers when she began her career about 30 years ago.

Millers Creek Elementary has a teaching job opening due to a retirement and Mulberry and Moravian Falls elementary schools have one vacant teaching position each due to people moving out of county.

North Wilkes Middle School has two teacher vacancies due to people moving and a third one due to a retirement. West Wilkes Middle has one vacancy due to a retirement.

No one retired at East Wilkes High School or East Wilkes Middle School, but a school counselor position was added and has been filled at East High. Mrs. Joines said East was the only high school with just one counselor.

West Wilkes High is getting an additional teaching position, Wilkes Central and North Wilkes high schools will share an additional art teacher and Wilkes Central and West Wilkes high schools will share an additional allied health occupations teacher.

Traphill and Ronda-Clingman elementary schools and Central Wilkes Middle School are each getting an exceptional children teacher position.

Lisa Joines, director of human resources for the Wilkes schools, said it was hard to find enough applicants for teacher positions as recently as eight or nine years ago.

“It’s totally different now…. It’s sad because we are turning away a lot of good people,” said Mrs. Joines.

She said people who seek but don’t get full-time teaching jobs are encouraged to work part-time as tutors and substitute teachers to improve their prospects.

Mrs. Joines said she was told that it was normal for the Wilkes school system to have 60 to 80 vacant teaching positions to fill each year until the last few years.

When the last of about 75 vacant certified teaching positions were filled just a week before the 2009-1010 school year started, a Wilkes school official said that was about 25 fewer than normal. Due to economic conditions, the official said, fewer educators were retiring or resigning.

Minutes of the April 27 and May 28, 2010, Wilkes Board of Education meetings indicate only 30 Wilkes teachers retired or resigned at the end of that school year.

 “We used to do most of our hiring in April, May and June because the state budget would already be approved,” said Mrs. Joines. “Now, with the state budget sometimes not approved until after August, we’re been afraid to spend” by hiring new employees.

“This year actually is the earliest we have started hiring people in years,” she said, explaining that Dr. Marty Hemric, Wilkes school superintendent, is optimistic that the Wilkes schools will receive the same level of state funding as last year.

School Board votes to reinstate equivalent of 4.5 teaching jobs

After hours of fervent testimony at Monday’s School Board meeting from parents, teachers and students upset by this spring’s layoffs of 35 teachers, the board decided to reinstate the equivalent of 4.5 full-time arts and world-language teaching jobs. The $445,000 will come from two pots of money: $9.3 million in one-time funds and $2.2 million in ongoing funds.

The reinstatements target situations where students would lose continuity from a program’s disappearance or where art was completely eliminated from a school, said Jeannie Mackie, the School Board president.

“We have a commitment to offer a well-rounded education, and we believe that includes art programs,” Mackie said.

Some of the changes to the 2012-2013 Anchorage School District budget include:

• Using $140,000 in one-time funds, the district restored the equivalent of one and a half positions to ensure continuity for middle school students taking a language that was eliminated by cuts.

That means Goldenview Middle School students who have been taking French since elementary school won’t miss next year and end up entering high school back at beginning level French, said School District spokeswoman Heather Sawyer. But the 1.4 full-time equivalent, or FTE, position, which will likely be shared between at least two teachers, is set to be cut at the end of next year.

“It’s a one-time thing,” she said.

School Board members said they were reluctant to spend one-time funds on bringing back regular teaching positions because of the “uncertain nature” of that money.

• Using $160,000 in ongoing funds, Romig and Gruening middle schools, where visual art programs were completely eliminated by cuts, got a position and a half back to ensure some art classes will be offered.

The 1.6 FTE position will also likely be shared between at least two teachers, Sawyer said. It hasn’t been decided how the time will be split between schools.

• The district also put $145,000 of ongoing funds into increasing teachers for middle and high school world languages and art.

The district hasn’t decided which schools will benefit from that money, but Sawyer says it will be used to restore some positions and to ensure that no secondary school starts next year without any art offerings.

The remaining money from the Legislature went to items such as new high school biology textbooks, a $5 million K-8 mathematics program, School Business Partnership coordinators and repayments to the fund balance and equipment maintenance fund, which had been “raided” earlier in the year to avoid classroom layoffs, said former school board president Gretchen Guess.

“I think we came up with something very responsible with the limitations that we had and the way that we were funded,” Mackie said.

This spring the district, facing a $30 million budget shortfall, laid off 35 teachers and 20 support staff.

So far 15 of the laid off teachers and six support staff have been placed into other positions with the district.

Monday’s handful of restorations will further decrease the number of teachers laid off, Sawyer said, but the process of rehiring teachers has to wait until the Anchorage Assembly signs off on the revised budget in July.

Teachers who lost their jobs but saw their positions restored at Monday’s meeting may not be returning to the schools they left.

Because of union contract rules, teachers can be bumped by seniority, meaning, Sawyer said, there’s no guarantee that an art teacher laid off from Gruening will end up back there.

“We are going to do our best to return teachers to their home school,” Sawyer said. “It may not always be possible.”

Steller Secondary School parent Andromeda Romano-Lax was involved with a group that organized a 35-hour sit-in at the Park Strip and testified at School Board meetings asking the district to bring teaching jobs back. She said she considered the result a success, though Lee Weiland, the laid-off Steller art teacher who inspired the protest, won’t be getting his job at the school back.

The protest, which drew more than 150 people, according to organizers, landed media coverage and raised the profile of the cause, she said.

“I’m thrilled we were able to get attention,” she said.

With $20 million budget deficits projected for the next few years, School Board members have said there are likely more tough cuts on the horizon.

Parents and teachers need to plan on going straight to the Legislature to ask for more funding to avoid future layoffs, Romano-Lax said.

“It all comes down to long-term funding,” she said. “I’ve always said that the School Board seems to be in the middle, they can only do so much if they don’t have funding.”

Broward school district to add teaching jobs

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. —
The Broward County school district plans to add teaching jobs.

In a departure from recent years, when drastic layoffs loomed as school ended for the summer, new teaching jobs will be created for the next school year. On Wednesday superintendent Robert Runcie said there will be about new 678 teaching positions.

The South Florida SunSentinel ( http://sunsent.nl/LwfvEJ) reports many of the new hires will teach specialty classes like physical education and music classes. Specialty programs suffered big cutbacks over the past few years.

The district announced 395 layoffs, but 380 of those will be non-instructional positions. Runcie previously said there would be administrative cuts to redirect funds to the classroom.

The new jobs will allow the district to address state mandates on class size.

Area has big teacher pool, few openings

The Newtown school district has a stack of applications for a high school math teacher vacancy.

Danbury public schools have received 300 applications so far for an elementary school teacher.

The pool of teaching talent is better than ever, school officials say.

“We’re not hiring many, but even for the math position, which a few years ago was hard to fill, we have plenty of applicants,” Newtown Superintendent Janet Robinson said Thursday. “But that’s not the case with all positions. We have an opening for a director of special education and that pool is not as good.”

Robinson said school districts tend to receive fewer applications for administrative jobs because administrators don’t work with children in the classroom.

As of Tuesday, Connecticut REAP, a national database of education jobs, showed 457 available teaching jobs in Connecticut.

The number of job openings appears to be shrinking.

In 2009-10, 42,888 teaching positions were available compared to 41,712 in 2010-11.

The Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents reports 1,200 teaching positions have been cut each year for the past two years, and the trend appears likely to continue.

“It’s a buyers’ market, and not for good reasons,” Association Executive Director Joseph Cirasuolo said last week. “There are very few openings. If this trend continues, fewer people will be interested in becoming teachers.”

Anecdotal information for the next school year shows a continued loss of jobs, Cirasuolo said.

“One of the things that hurt the 2012-13 budgets is that all the extra federal grant money districts received the (last) few years, ARRA (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) and the Education Jobs fund, is gone,” he said. “While the state has increased the education cost sharing grants to towns, it’s nowhere near as much as the federal money.”

Danbury public schools Human Resources Director Kim Thompson said she is building her pool of applicants a month early for vacancies she is posting.

“The talent pool is amazing,” she said.

Thompson has posted 12 teaching vacancies, including six at the high school and three at the elementary and middle schools. If the city gets a grant to expand full-day kindergarten, she will need more teachers at that level.

“Our teacher contract requires us to send a letter to everyone … with their assignment for next year,” she said. “Now we can see where the holes are, transfer existing people and hire others.”

Brookfield has three elementary and three high school teaching openings to fill, and Assistant Superintendent Eugenia Slone said she continues to be impressed with the talent of the applicants.

“They come with strong skill sets, a lot of knowledge and a variety of experiences,” Slone said. “Brookfield is a good school district and we have a good reputation.”

Not only do the once hard-to-fill positions have strong candidates, but Slone said she has also had certified teachers substituting in their subject areas, something that was rare in the past.

Bethel Human Resources Director Laila Rudinas, who has posted vacancies for two special education teachers and a speech pathologist to replace retiring staff, received 1,200 applications for three elementary teaching openings last year.

eileenf@newstimes.com; 203-731-3333

Portland Plans To Save 110 Teaching Jobs

Portland Public Schools learned Thursday that the city plans to cover nearly one-fifth of the district’s budget shortfall to help save 110 teaching positions.

Rob Manning / OPBFrom left: Gwen Sullivan, Portland Association of

Teachers president), Carole Smith, PPS Superintendent, and Mayor Sam Adams.

Mayor Sam Adams called in his finance officials, as you’d expect for a city budget announcement. But he had special guests, too: superintendents from two city school districts: Carole Smith with Portland Public and Don Grotting from David Douglas. Adams told them the city should support the progress they’re making.

Adams explained, “Now is not the time to reduce the teaching staff of our schools, and lose this momentum. So we have ‘overcut’ the city’s budget in places, to come up with $7 million, about $7.5 million in one-time resources.”

Portland Public gets $5 million. That’s roughly half of what it’ll cost the district to avoid cutting 110 teaching jobs. The city struck a deal with the district and teachers’ union to make up the rest. Superintendent Carole Smith says she’s planning to cut beyond the nine million in administrative cuts she had already proposed.

Smith said, “Our principals will be looking at a three-day furlough — so school-based staff, three-day furlough. And our central office is looking at a ten-day furlough, as a portion of how we are going to cover our two-point-six-five million dollar portion of the deal.”

For weeks, the teachers’ union has balked at accepting furlough days, in part to pressure Smith to make deeper administrative cuts. The president of the Portland Association of Teachers, Gwen Sullivan, didn’t say how her members would help fill the remaining gap now. The deal for Portland Public needs support from the union, from the Portland school board, and the city council to hang together.

Other Portland districts haven’t been asked to make concessions in exchange for city money. Superintendent Don Grotting says David Douglas has cut 16 percent of its teaching staff in the last two years.

Grotting said, “We just settled our contract, and our bargaining unit made over — both bargaining units made over one million dollars in concessions of benefits they will not receive.”

Adams’ final budget as mayor focused on “direct services.” In addition to teachers, it prioritizes police patrol officers and firefighters.

A big chunk of the 14 million dollars Adams proposes cutting comes from what he calls “back office” workers. The head of Management of Finance, Jack Graham, has a lot of those.

Graham said, “The cuts to core administrative services’ function are substantial. However, I feel that it is the right thing to do, to cut administration in order to provide direct services to our citizens.”

The budget plan would also hit Portlanders in the wallet. Adams proposes a rise of more than six percent on combined water and sewer bills. But he points out that’s a smaller increase than the bureaus requested.

All these pieces — the $7.5 million for schools, the utility rate increases, the cuts to city administration — are part of the city’s budget. It still needs approval from Portland city council.

This story originally appeared on Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Dunedin Tech Teaching Positions in Jeopardy

Clare CURRAN

MP for Dunedin South
David CLARK

MP for
Dunedin North                       
 

28 May
2012                                                          

MEDIA STATEMENT  

Dunedin Tech Teaching
Positions in Jeopardy
 
Dunedin Labour MPs
Clare Curran and David Clark are throwing their weight
behind Dunedin’s three intermediate schools which, between
them, face losing nine technology teaching jobs under the
Government’s plans to increase class sizes.
 
The
Government announced as part of last week’s budget that
technology staff numbers will now be incorporated into the
schools teacher-student ratios.
 
“The changes
alter the way specialist staff, including technology
teachers, are funded at intermediate schools. In Dunedin
that will affect 1200 Year 7 and 8 students,” Dunedin
South MP Clare Curran said.
 
“In order to keep the
technology teachers, the schools would have to increase
class sizes to 40 which is simply unacceptable,”

 
“While the Government is patting itself on the
back at getting schools to connect to Ultra-Fast Broadband,
it is taking away the core part of the curriculum that
prepares students for the high-tech jobs of the
future.
 
“Doing away with this part of the
curriculum will affect up to 880 jobs of technology teachers
throughout New Zealand. It is a hugely important subject
that is being taught at a critical time in our children’s
lives,” Clare Curran said.
 
Dunedin North Labour
MP David Clark said the schools had not be consulted and had
no warning of the cuts.
 
“Some schools will have
no choice but to cancel technology classes altogether. If
the National Government goes through with this decision and
Dunedin loses their technology teachers, it would be very
difficult to reverse.
 
“The National Government
must take heed of what the sector is saying about the effect
these cuts will have. Children are our future, and it would
be a crisis to see the demise of technology teaching in our
intermediate schools,” David Clark
said.
 
“Labour opposes the move to bigger
classes,” said Clare Curran. “We are calling on the
Government to cancel the working group it has set up and its
policy to increase class
sizes.”

ENDS

Cuts coming for Sherwood School District, including teacher jobs

SHERWOOD — The Sherwood School District is cutting more than it had planned from its 2012-13 budget and will eliminate 8.5 teaching positions.

The district was anticipating $1.25 million in cuts but instead is proposing $1.34 million in reductions for 2012-13, according to the proposed budget that the budget committee unanimously approved on Tuesday.

Chief financial officer Wayne Lowry said it was not a case of adding more cuts after hitting the target. The savings from proposed reductions simply added up to more than the district expected.

This puts the general fund for next school year at $38.7 million, compared with $37.8 million for 2011-12. The district is also drawing about $1.5 million from reserves.

Although the operating funds are up, the district had to make cuts because costs — including health insurance, PERS, step increases and inflation — have gone up while revenue has remained flat.

“Our revenue is staying the same on a per-student basis, and our costs continue to increase,” Lowry said. “This is the exact same problem every school district is having. Reserves are being depleted because we’ve had the same per-student amount since 2007 or 2008.”

Most of the reductions will come from job cuts, including the equivalent of 8.5 teachers. Three elementary school and 3.5 middle school teaching positions will be eliminated. At the high school, two jobs that were to be added to keep up with growth have been scrapped.

It’s not clear if there will be layoffs because it will depend on retirements, attrition and other moves within the district. This will save the district $624,750, but will increase class sizes by one student in the elementary schools, three in the middle school and 0.5 at the high school.

Elementary and middle classes will average about 27 students; high school classes will average about 29.

At the central office, a vacant receptionist position will be eliminated and the secretary for the Talented Gifted program will be laid off. A certified teacher who was assigned to lead the technology department is being replaced with a half-time administrator.

Student athletes will have to pay $25 more per sport to participate. Participation fees last year were increased from $165 to $200.

In a bit of good news, the city will waive $50,000 a year in storm drainage fees paid by the school district for the next two years.

The approved budget calls for two furlough days over the summer for administrators and year-round staffers, in addition to the three furlough days in place for all employees during the school year.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, budget committee members decided on a second option, Lowry said, which would call for the two additional furlough days to apply to all employees. This allows the district to keep three teaching jobs that would otherwise get cut.

This last-minute option requires contract negotiations with teachers, administrators and classified staff to be finalized in the next two weeks. Lowry said the district is in talks with the unions and the budget is expected to be adopted at the June 12 school board meeting.

– Sally Ho
Follow @SherwdReporter

Some teaching jobs may return pending ratification of contract – The Record

Careful not to put a number or percentage to anything at this point, Douglas County School District Superintendent Lisa Noonan confirmed Monday that an agreement has been reached with the teachers union and that some jobs likely will be added back to the 2012-13 budget.

“The mediation was successful on Thursday,” she said. “Some pretty big next steps have to take place. The membership of the teachers association has to have a formal vote to ratify the agreement. That’s this Thursday. If that passes, then we will hold a special board meeting Tuesday night at 5 p.m. That’s when school board members get to decide whether they want to approve it. If it’s passed at the board level, then we’ll have a contract for a two-year period.”

Noonan said the contract with the Douglas County Professional Education Association would apply to the current school year and the 2012-13 school year. There would be no raises, but there would be no pay cuts.

Noonan said teachers would give up two contract days a year, from 186 to 184. The savings would cover what teachers have been asked to pay into the public employee retirement system. Health insurance premiums the district pays per employee would remain the same at $575 a month through the calendar year, then increase to $585 in January.

What the agreement means for 20 teaching positions recently cut or reduced is still uncertain.

“We’ll definitely have some call-backs, but not enough to reverse everything we did,” Noonan said.

She said add-backs are still contingent on board ratification of the contract.

“We’re still analyzing the cost of each component of this,” she said. “It definitely allows some to come back.”

On May 16, a day before the agreement was reached, a public hearing on the budget elicited emotional testimony from students, parents and staff members in defense of programs slated for reduction — specifically agriculture and music at Douglas High School.

“We RIF’d (reduction in force) with the worst case in mind,” Noonan said. “This is not the worst-case settlement.”

Saugerties to opinion on $54.7 million propagandize budget

A director looks on during an spontaneous bill conference final week (photo by Will Dendis)

Voters will conduct to a polls May 15 to collect 3 curators for a School Board and confirm a predestine of a board’s due $54.7 million budget. The taxation levy boost would be 1.7 percent.

Should a bill fail, a School Board would have to cut about $645,000, pronounced Superintendent Seth Turner during a open bill forum on May 7. That would meant a rejecting of 4 training positions, 5 full-time clergyman assistants, some apparatus and presumably some sports.

More specifically, a rebate in 4 training positions would be separate between dual layoffs and withdrawal dual vacancies combined by timid teachers unfilled, Turner said.

“From a standpoint, we could contend a positions won’t be there, though a high propagandize administration would have to establish how they would accommodate those needs. It would many expected meant some detriment of modernized chain courses during a delegate turn and aloft category loads in amicable studies and in science,” Turner said.

Science would be a sold problem given “there’s a lab component, and we can usually get a certain series of students into a laboratory during a time.”

The detriment of dual teachers during a facile turn would meant incomparable classes in dual grades. This could make it unfit to keep students with special needs in a mainstream, Turner said.

The detriment of training partner positions would be quite damaging, Turner said. “I have mentioned some 4 or 5 training partner positions would be eliminated. Teaching assistants take on a innumerable of responsibilities opposite a district. That’s how some of a library programs are run given dual years ago we halved a series of librarians in a district.”

The estimates are not final, though they give an thought of what would be lost. The series of students with special needs, that would be worked out after in a year, would have an impact on a budget.

The numbers

Spending in a subsequent propagandize year would be $54.67 million, a 2.3 percent boost over this year. The taxation levy – a volume to be lifted by internal skill taxes – would boost 1.87 percent, subsequent a 2 percent taxation top imposed by New York State. The due bill would outcome in a taxation levy of $35.19 million, adult $645,094 from this year’s $34.55 million.

Tax rates formed on a bill are projected to be $17.66 per $1,000 for city and encampment residents, an boost of 32 cents, or 1.87 percent. The commission boost would be a same for Woodstock and Ulster.

For a initial time in several years a propagandize district has a account balance, popularly called a surplus, from final year to pull on, Turner said. The bill calls for an allowance of $300,000 of a approximately $1.2 million over-abundance to equivalent taxes.

The bill preserves all vital programs, including sports, Turner said. It cuts dual English as a second denunciation teachers and an facile propagandize teacher. While a cost of outsourcing a ESL module to BOCES is roughly a same as a income savings, a district saves border benefits. In addition, an executive position – information director – will be separated from a bill for subsequent year, along with 5 part-time monitors.

State assist is budgeted during $18,297,227, about $54,000 some-more than a 2011-2012 budget, an boost of about 0.3 percent according to a bill document.

Turner will acquire $161,262 underneath a due budget, a bottom of a operation specified in his contract. That’s a 2.00 boost over his stream income of $158,100.

The bill for students with disabilities declined by $101,341, or 1.28 percent, from $7935,233 to $7,833,892. This was mostly a outcome of a 14,32 percent dump in a volume paid to a Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) from $1,466,574 to $1.256.512.

While a bill is tight, it preserves many of a amenities relatives wish for their children, such as sports and extracurricular activities. If a bill fails, a house will have to find an additional cuts, as a district would be taboo from spending any some-more than it did final year.

The Saugerties Central School District School Board elections and 2012-2013 bill opinion will be hold from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday, May 15. Polling will be during a district’s schools.