More than 600 employees were notified Friday that they are part of a massive layoff in the Tucson Unified School District.
Of the district's 3,800 certified employees, including teachers, librarians and counselors, 560 received notice that they'll be getting their pink slips if the Governing Board approves the list Tuesday.
Sixty-five of the district's 182 administrators, from principals to department directors, also were given notice.
While the layoffs were anticipated given the potential for deep state budget cuts, slipping student enrollment and the fact that employees needed to be notified by April 15 if they were going to receive a contract for the next school year, the list went deeper than many had expected.
All teachers in their first, second and third years with the district were given notice, with the exception of teachers in alternative education, special education and hard-to-fill positions such as highly qualified math and science teachers.
Last year at this time, only 40 elementary teachers were put on notice. But this year, the district is reacting to a worst-case scenario of a $63 million hit.
The pink slips might not be permanent, though. Alyson Nielson, TUSD's director of employment services, said the district will begin hiring employees back as soon as more information becomes available on the budget.
"We are trying to be conservative, but once we become a little more confident as the budget takes shape, we can start getting teachers back into positions. I expect we'll be in a situation to begin to recall staff before the school year is even out."
That doesn't mean it won't be disruptive.
Many principals have made conscious hiring decisions and have invested time in training teachers to match their own expectations. And because staff callbacks will be done largely by seniority and certification, schools won't necessarily get back their original staffers.
And some schools will be more profoundly impacted than others.
Dodge Middle School, which has a mature teaching stable, doesn't have teachers on the list, although like all of the other schools it has to make plans to cut its budget by 18 percent. Those plans are due to the district April 30. Principal Cathy Comstock said she expects in the worst case to lose an assistant principal and a librarian, but her staff otherwise wasn't immediately affected by the layoffs.
John Bellisario, the principal at Valencia Middle School, meanwhile, is losing 30 percent of his teachers. The far Southwest Side school is in a high-poverty area, has struggled with an "underperforming" label for two years and has high teacher turnover.
Bellisario, in his first year at the school, said it's a different campus already under his leadership. But he's worried about the impact the cuts will have.
"I'm really concerned because we have done a lot of work with professional development with our staff," he said. Getting a new staff, he said, "will be like starting from scratch. We've made a lot of progress and come a long ways, so this is a setback."
Nielson said the human-resources staff is trying to be sensitive to such concerns. Teachers who are part of the layoffs are filling out forms listing school preferences and credentials.
"Somebody at Broadway and Houghton, for example, would have a hard time getting to a school on the other side of town," she said. "We're going to try to work within those preferences."
Same with teaching philosophy. Teachers at Drachman Montessori Magnet, for example, have to be comfortable with Montessori methods, while teachers at Cholla High Magnet School should have some familiarity with its focus on International Baccalaureate programs.
"We might be biting off more than we can chew," Nielson acknowledged, given the scope of the layoffs, "but we're going to work really hard to make sure we find the best fit possible."
Contact reporter Rhonda Bodfield at 806-7754 or rbodfield@azstarnet.com.
Labels: Arizona, layoffs, Tuscon
