L.B. School Board OKs Layoff of 700 Teachers

The Long Beach Board of Education—meeting in the latest bloodletting to address hemorrhaging state funding—approved Tuesday night about $24.4 million in additional cuts and layoff notices that will bring to about 700 the number of teachers to be pink-slipped.

At its meeting two weeks ago, the LBUSD board approved $27 million in funding cuts, increased the number of students in every classroom and closed two elementary schools. The classroom size increase effectively spelled layoff for 429 full-time teaching positions. Tuesday evening's agenda included memorializing those 429 positions and adding about 270 more full-time teaching jobs to those lost. Librarians, counselors, nurses and other teaching staff were reduced in number. Middle school sports was suspended. (The preliminary layoff resolution can be viewed as a pdf at right.)

The funding cuts have now reached an astonishing $51.4 million in 14 days. (Ed. note: we originally reported $60.4 million but the district Wednesday issued a correction that $24.4 million, not $32 million, in cuts were approved Tuesday night; the board postponed voting on $7.4 million in proposed cuts to central office and operations costs until a new report comes in). The district has been operating on a $700 million budget.

"Drastic" was the word that stood out in what, ordinarily, is a dry agenda document, under the headline "Unfinished Business." The narrative accompanying the agenda broke it down. The state of California has been reeling from economic hard times since fall of 2007, and that devastation has been passed onto every district, including LBUSD's 100 schools. New Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed a state budget that would stave off almost surreal financial cuts by extending income, sales and use taxes that otherwise would expire. It rides upon a June special election about the tax extensions.

But it ''did not outline a plan for funding school districts if the proposed initiative is unsuccessful," the introduction explained. Thus the district, nationally recognized for its success at rising test scores for even the poorest neighborhoods in the 50-square-mile city, has to plan for a worst-case scenario.

That figure has been estimated at about $155 million in potential total funding cuts by the district in order to remain solvent and to staff for minimum education standards. Two weeks ago, the 429 teaching slots were approved with the emphasis that they would be gone even if the June election cushioned some of the state's education funding deficits. Currently, the state still owes LBUSD about $115 million that may force the district to borrow to make payroll in future months.

An additional $6 million was on the agenda as potentially movable to restricted funds, in order to protect the district's general fund, or operational accounts. Some of the proposed shifts included $2.3 million presently earmarked for accelerated learning programs at Wilson Classical, Poly PACE, QUEST and CIC. (These are sometimes generically thought of as GATE programs).

At the school board's last meeting two weeks ago, Superintendent Christopher Steinhauser indicated that he would do all that was possible to shelter such advanced learning programs because they are cornerstones to nationally recognized LBUSD, which is California's third-largest at 86,000 students.

Principals at Belmont Shore-serving high schools told Patch that they'd been assured that the programs for high-achievement students would be spared—at least for this coming school year.

Because LBUSD is the city's largest employer, with 8,000 workers, staff cuts have a significant impact on the overall economy of Long Beach, the state's sixth largest city. Even if Brown's budget plan—the tax extension, and a threat to disband redevelopment agencies statewide to free up what he's estimated as more than $1 billion for education—wins voter approval, the district says that it will still need to cut roughly $55 million in spending over two years.

By adding more students to every grade-level classroom, the district saved roughly $24 million, it estimated. The 429 teachers who next month will receive layoff notices will get those because the increased class sizes require fewer instructors. Even if the tax extension makes the June ballot, and voters were to approve it, those 429 teaching positions would not be restored.

Steinhauser, who has already overseen $170 million in funding cuts over the past three years, has said that the district's budget-cutting will likely continue; he called the state's financial crisis "the worst" that he's seein in the three decades that he's been in public education.

The district is required by law to send its staffers formal notice, the ''pink slip,'' of intended layoffs by mid-March, which pushed the board decision to Feb. 15 in order for staff to get notices mailed in time.