Indian Prairie Dist. 204 cuts 145 teachers

Nearly 7 percent of Indian Prairie Unit District 204's teaching staff was released Monday night.

Facing a $21.4 million deficit next year and an austerity plan that would cut even gym towels out of the budget, board members Monday night approved the release of 145 nontenured teachers, the most the district has ever released.

"The board certainly wishes we could achieve the necessary budget reductions without releasing a single member of the of the District 204 team," board President Curt Bradshaw said. "However, we owe it to our taxpayers to live within our means as they're striving to."

Administrators charged with determining the fate of the released teachers said they wrestled for weeks with different approaches for staffing the district's schools while determining enrollment projections, the number of nontenured staff available and the impact in each building.

At the secondary level, administrators wanted to work on a plan that allows them to boost the staff at Metea Valley and move more staff to Waubonsie Valley's Frontier Campus as more students are attending class there.

She also said the goal was to look for as many natural exits as possible through retirees and staffers not invited back for performance issues to reduce the number of non-renewals.

Union officials, however, who packed the room with supporters wearing black to signify their mourning, said they don't think the administration was entirely upfront with the teachers during the process. Many also thought the process of releasing third- and fourth-year teachers as well as first- and second-year, instead of just releasing first- and second-year teachers, allowed building principals to play favorites.

"Tonight the IPEA mourns the loss of 145 colleagues. Unprecedented state funding cuts of more than $1.2 billion force the board to reduce programs and staff. IPEA has tried to collaborate with the administration in dealing with the consequences of these massive reductions in state funding," union President Val Dranius said.

"However, the administration's process of releasing nontenured teachers, though legal, was terribly flawed and lacked transparency. As a result, the association asks the board to postpone the vote on the release of nontenured teachers, instruct the administration to go back and review the process, include the association in the review and make recommendations based on logic, standards and compassion."

Assistant Superintendent for Human Relations Nancy Valenta stressed that none of the administrators wanted to be in that situation and said the time they spent on the process was being understated.

"It's tough to not have been at the table and to second-guess the complexity of the some of the movement that was made," Valenta said. "And I know it was a very tough thing for people to accept at face value, and that's what we're asking them to do, since they weren't at the table."

After hearing from 23 speakers, many of whom spoke against the staff cuts, board members Dawn DeSart and Christine Vickers also began to waiver and voted against releasing the staff. Both said they would have liked the board to wait until closer to the April 15 deadline to allow better communication between the administration and those being released.

A majority of the board, however, felt postponing the inevitable would be "cruel" and the release of all 145 teachers was approved by a vote of 5 to 2.