Proposed staff cuts due to declining enrollment, officials say
By Jennifer Eisenbart
Staff writer
After spending more than an hour and a half in closed session Monday night, the Burlington Area School District School Board came out and approved preliminary layoff notices to be sent to 17 BASD teachers.
The cuts amount to 13.8908 full-time equivalent positions, with some teachers getting a cut in hours compared to losing their full position.
The actual meeting which occurred in open session took less than five minutes, as the board quickly voted and there were no comments asked for from the audience.
The list of the names and positions of 17 teachers was requested by the Standard Press, but was not available before press deadline, as Assistant Superintendent Peter Smet said the district was still in the process of notifying all the teachers.
BASD Superintendent David Moyer said that the district’s Montessori program would continue to exist in its current form, while Project Lead the Way classes would be available to students who want to take part. Those two specifics addressed some of the proposed cuts, which concerned the public following the announcement of the budget scenarios by Moyer two weeks ago.
“This is a preliminary notice,” stressed School Board President David Thompson. “Depending on the way the final numbers come in, we can adjust this.”
Moyer said Tuesday that the cuts were the least severe that the board could have gone for.
“The board last night took the least severe route in terms of teacher non-renewals,” Moyer said. “They dismissed only the people dictated by declining enrollment, the high school schedule change, the restructuring of the middle school PE program plus some minor program adjustments.”
Moyer did add that there might also be non-renewals due to specific personnel issues unrelated to the budget situation.
Otherwise, he said, “We only cut the people necessary.”
Moyer said that the layoffs do not automatically translate into any of the four budget scenarios that he outlined in late March.
“We’re starting the budget development process at a Finance Committee meeting April 23,” Moyer said. The scenarios, he added, were presented to give the board “context” in which to consider the layoffs.
“I didn’t think they could make those decisions in a vacuum,” he said.
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