Layoffs total 209 in U-46
Another 31 employees in Elgin Area School District U-46 will receive layoff notices before the end of the school year, bringing the total reduction for the 2012-2013 school year to 209.
The school board on Monday approved the layoffs, which included two teachers, 15 support staff members and 14 driver's assistants. Support personnel include classroom teacher assistants, support staff in grant-funded programs and one part-time nonunion employee, U-46 Chief of Staff Tony Sanders said.
Driver's assistants provide aid primarily on special education buses to make sure harnesses and special restraints are used correctly and to help students on and off the bus.
No other layoffs are expected.
Reductions are commonplace in districts this time of year as they prepare staffing levels while also meeting state deadlines for notifying affected parties, which is 45 days before the end of year. Many of the positions, Sanders said, are eligible to to be filled for the new school year once funding and enrollment figures are known.
“If the grant is funded again, then they would be rehired and the same could be said for a lot of the positions,” Sanders said. “The only positions that would not be returning are those who were not honorably dismissed. There was only one of those.”
Furthermore, Sanders said, teachers who were hired after March 19 of this year were aware that their position would be reduced because they were hired to fill a spot until the end of the school year.
The school board last month approved the reduction in force of 178 positions, which included 77 teachers, 99 support staff personnel and two administrators.
Sanders said this year's total is the lowest the district has seen in the past five years. Comparatively, the district laid off 324 teachers and staff in 2011. The biggest reductions of the past four years came in the 2010 school year when the district approved layoffs of 1,177 personnel in the face of a mounting $40 million deficit and anticipated cuts to district funding. That dwarfed the previous year's number of 470 layoffs.