Potential layoffs, school closure

Andrew Edwards

Huntington Beach City School District will warn 28 teachers they may

lose their jobs this spring and is considering closing one of the

district’s eight elementary schools because of fiscal constraints.

At a special meeting on Tuesday night, the school board approved

giving administrators leave to warn the teachers of possible layoffs.

The notices must be delivered by March 15.

The board approved a two-part resolution that was originally

written to allow district officials to prepare to eliminate 26

teaching positions in the elementary schools. It was amended to allow

officials to cut two special positions for middle school teachers who

are not assigned to classrooms.

The final decision to lay off teachers could come as late as May

15. The process to shut down a school could take about two years to

finalize, board member Catherine McGough said.

Whether the district closes a school hinges on the amount of

children attending classes in the district, Trustee Brian Rechsteiner

said. And enrollment is expected to drop next year by about 100

students, he added.

“If our enrollment is declining so much, [closing a school] is a

decision that has to be made somewhere,” Rechsteiner said.

Pending board approval, Supt. Gary Rutherford said, he planned to

gather proposals from companies that could be contracted to conduct a

demographic study to explore the feasibility of closing a campus.

“All they did was direct me to go out and find [a proposal],”

Rutherford said.

Two separate votes were taken on possible teacher layoffs.

Trustees agreed 4 to 1 to allow administrators to hand out notices,

with board president Robert Mann dissenting.

Mann said he worried that the resolution assumed the board would

eliminate class size reduction, a $205,000 budget item, as the

district works to trim its general fund budget for next school year

by close to $900,000.

“For me, this wasn’t one of my priorities for a cut,” Mann said.

The board also agreed 3 to 2 to look at eliminating other

positions. Board member Shirley Carey said she did not want to resort

to layoffs but the provision would give the district more flexibility

of positions are cut.

“I feel like we need to broaden this more, so we have more

options,” she said.

Teacher layoffs would go hand-in-hand with the elimination of

smaller class sizes. Faced with cutting the district’s budget for the

third consecutive year, Rutherford had recommended that the school

board eliminate class-size reduction from the 2004-05 budget and rely

on community fundraising efforts to save the program and its

teachers.

State law requires teachers be given advance notice of a possible

layoff, and there is still a chance that teaching jobs can be

preserved -- if parents can save the jobs on their own time, with

their own money.

Community for Class Size Reduction, a group of parents raising

funds to save class-size reduction -- along with the teachers needed

for the program -- are moving closer to collecting the $205,000

needed to keep the program alive for another school year.

More than $177,000 has been donated or pledged to the group, said

Joe Churilla, the parent in charge of the group’s finances.

“We are going to save those 26 teachers’ jobs,” member Kelly

Vander Lans said.

* ANDREW EDWARDS covers education and crime. He can be reached at

(714) 965-7177, (949) 494-4321 or andrew.edwards@latimes.com.