LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Board of Education has voted to lay off as many as 5,400 teachers and support personnel for the upcoming school year.
The vote came Tuesday as employees protested raucously outside the meeting. The board had voted hours earlier to save the jobs of 1,996 elementary school teachers using federal stimulus funds.
The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest school system, faces a $596 million budget shortfall for the 2009-10 school year.
The final number of layoffs remains to be determined because the exact amount of state and federal funds coming to the district remains unclear.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE.
LAUSD is the largest public school system in California. It is the second-largest in the United States. During the 2007-2008 school year they served 694,288 students, and employed over 45,000 teachers as well as 38,000 support employees. This is the second largest employer in Los Angeles County.
This evening, the 4-3 vote came after testimony and debate that lasted more than four hours.
At one school nearly two-thirds of the teachers received notice that they could be laid off.
Per the Los Angeles Times:
Advocates and union leaders have insisted that the school district is not using enough of its federal economic stimulus money to save jobs.
"I don’t think the stimulus money should be saved for a rainy day," said board member Tamar Galatzan, who voted against the budget proposal. "I think we should look outside and see a storm brewing."
With an average teachers salary of $63,000 (link)
this will lead to alot more pain and agony for a large block of middle class Los Angeles residents. And don't forget the students! This will result in class size reduction as well as the removal of newer and perhaps more innovative teachers.
But it isn't hard to conclude the problem has more to do with the Ivory Tower than the teachers. Per the daily news in Los Angeles:
On the edge of downtown Los Angeles, overlooking the 110 Freeway, stands a 29-story office building that boasts many of the trappings of a modern corporate headquarters: a cafeteria with flat-screen TVs, a state-of-the-art media production center, an on-site dry-cleaning service.
The tower is the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District - home to more than 3,400 employees. They are the core of a massive bureaucracy that has surged in recent years even as the number of students and teachers has dropped.
And 3,200 more administrators and support staff are scattered throughout the city, as top officials acknowledge that the number of highly paid managers has swollen beyond what is needed to run the nation's second-largest school district.
"There are assistants to assistants," says Senior Deputy Superintendent Ramon Cortines, who was hired in May to oversee the district's day-to-day operations. link
The LAUSD administration has grown by about 20% over the past six years as enrollment has declined. With an average salary of $95,000 who wouldn't want to jump on the administration bandwagon.
If you would like to express some outrage please contact:
Ramon C. Cortines
Superintendent of Schools
Office of the Superintendent
333 S. Beaudry Ave., 24th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90017
Mailing Address
P.O. Box 3307
Los Angeles, CA 90051
Tel: 213-241-7000
Fax: 213-241-8442
superintendent@lausd.net
and tell him to put his on-site dry-cleaning, state of the art media production center and cafeteria with flat screen TV's in the broken down schools with the students they are entrusted to educate.