Judge Urges Schools to Forgo Layoffs : Education: He finds that district has not followed adequate procedures with targeted employees. Ruling is not binding.

An administrative law judge has recommended that the Los Angeles Unified School District abandon its plan to lay off up to 980 teachers, librarians, nurses and other employees, which could plunge its already difficult budget-cutting process into deeper turmoil.

After a five-week hearing, Administrative Law Judge Paul Hogan ruled late Monday that the district did not provide the affected employees with adequate records documenting their seniority, and failed to establish the need to exempt bilingual employees from the layoffs.

Those “procedural defects” would justify rescinding the layoffs because employees did not have the information needed to fight against losing their jobs, the judge said.

Hogan’s ruling is not binding on the Los Angeles Board of Education, which has until June 14 to decide whether to proceed with the layoffs.

If the board drops positions from the payroll, the teachers’ union plans to challenge the layoffs in court. The administrative ruling favoring the teachers would likely influence a judge.

“Our chances in Superior Court would be excellent,” said Larry Trygstad, attorney for United Teachers-Los Angeles. “And if we win there, those people could collect back salary, which would mean the district would be paying about $40 million to people who weren’t working for them.”

District lawyer Ron Apperson, saying the district could prevail in an appeal, said he will advise the board to stay on course during its budget deliberations.

If board members accept the judge’s decision and retain all 980 employees, they will be more hard-pressed to find ways to make more than $350 million in cuts needed to balance the coming year’s budget.

“We’re grappling with a whole variety of scenarios, and this clearly makes it more difficult,” board member Mark Slavkin said.

“To the extent that you take out the layoff option for a large number of people, it forces us into the corner of having to cut (pay) to a greater extent, and I’m not sure that’s in the best interests of our teachers to have that happen.”

The board approved sending the layoff notices in March to give itself flexibility in making the cuts and to comply with state law that requires tenured staffers who may not be rehired in the coming year to be notified by March 15.

Although board members say they never intend to lay off all 980 employees, several of the cost-cutting options being considered would result in fewer teachers working next year. Among the measures being debated are an increase in class sizes and cuts in the district’s administrative staff, which would bump former teachers back into the classroom.

The board also is set to vote this month on trimming support services and out-of-classroom programs, which would reduce the need for librarians, nurses, psychologists and others next year.

In addition, Supt. Bill Anton has proposed a one-year, 7% pay cut for all employees, which would save the cash-strapped district more than $163 million. The layoffs would save about $50 million in salaries next year.

“The layoffs were to be the result of dominoes that fall as we make cuts . . . not a vote on whether to lay off these specific people,” Slavkin said.

The administrative process does not affect the status of probationary teachers, who are not entitled to hearings. About 1,000 of them have been notified that they may not be rehired this fall, Trygstad said.

The marathon administrative hearing--held in the cavernous Naval Marine Corps Reserve Center near downtown Los Angeles to accommodate the hundreds of employees who had received layoff notices--was the longest, most complex such proceeding ever held in the state, Trygstad said.

District budget services director Henry Jones said the hearing cost the district almost $600,000 in its first three weeks, most of that going to pay substitutes to fill in for teachers attending the sessions.

Under state law and union contracts, layoffs for credentialed employees must be made according to seniority, which is determined in the case of teachers by subjects an instructor is certified to teach.

“The credentialing system is so complex . . . we were dealing with hundreds if not thousands of credentials and qualifications and a myriad of seniority dates,” Trygstad said.

In his ruling, Hogan acknowledged the difficulty of determining seniority in the 32,000-teacher Los Angeles district, but nevertheless characterized the district’s records as disorganized and incomplete.

“Essentially, (the judge) said this district failed to provide the teachers with sufficient documentation so they could verify or challenge their place on the seniority list,” said district attorney Howard Friedman.

The judge also criticized the district for failing to show why some bilingual employees were exempt from the layoffs and others were not. Hogan said the district failed to show why language skills should protect certain employees and concluded that the decisions on the exemptions were not made according to any policy but arbitrarily by “an unnamed administrator.”