Trinity Alps District set to lay off more teachers

Many familiar faces will be missing from Trinity High School and Weaverville Elementary School classrooms next fall after nine longtime teachers retire and possibly six others are laid off due to ongoing budget shortfalls in the Trinity Alps Unified School District.

The district’s current deficit hovers near $1 million in its budget of $8.5 million as state funding of schools continues to slide or be deferred and student enrollment continues to drop, further reducing the funding received.

Budget projections for the 2010-11 school year include a $273,000 cut in salaries for certificated staff (teachers) and $245,000 from salaries for classified staff that includes aides, bus drivers, cafeteria, maintenance, library and office workers.

To avoid as many layoffs as possible, the district board of trustees has offered one-time retirement incentives for both certificated and classified staff to consider.

A “golden handshake” deal offers two years of additional service credit to be applied to retirement earnings. An increase in the health care benefit cap for elementary school retirees matching the higher amount received by high school staff has also been offered for any who agree to retire now.

There will be costs to the district that have not been calculated yet pending commitment from employees wishing to accept the incentives. The savings will come from not replacing them and from lower salaries paid to less senior employees.

The Board of Trustees last week formally accepted retirements from eight teachers who will finish the current school year, but not return in the fall. They are Susan Cousins, Christy Ravenscroft, Jean Yoho, Judy Fisk, Randall Walker and Susan Alexander from the elementary school and Gerry Schaden and Ernie Jones from the high school. Another was later submitted by high school teacher Lynn Kelly, bringing the total to nine.

The deadline to commit was Feb. 12 to allow time for the district to meet another deadline, the March 15 date by which any teachers who won’t be rehired for the next school year must receive layoff notices.

The retirement announcements reduced the number of pink slips going out to six including one full-time counselor, one elementary school teacher and four at the high school including an English teacher, math teacher, industrial arts teacher and credit recovery/independent studies teacher. The list is based on seniority and also credentials, complicated by bumping rights.

The notices will be going out next week, but not finalized until May. Some could be rescinded “depending on what happens with the budget between now and then,” said District Supt. Ed Traverso who added that he expects at least two of the notices to be rescinded almost immediately, dropping the total to four.

Classified staff has until March 26 to commit on the retirement package and Traverso said he believes there will be a few takers there as well.

“We had a lot of good people put a lot of thought into taking the incentives. To a person, they love what they do and would like to keep on, but we are losing some outstanding people,” Traverso said, adding that the decisions came down to the incentive package “that we’ll be paying for a while. It won’t come around again soon.”

High school teacher and local California Teachers Association representative Mike Flint said “we want to thank and recognize our retiring teachers. They will be missed. This will save the district quite a bit of money (in the long run) and avoid many layoffs, but it will also change the makeup of our schools.”

The complex process of reassigning the remaining staff of 32.5 teachers for next year’s classes will begin next week.

Traverso said class sizes will tend to be larger — up to 24 students per teacher in the primary grades, where the average this year is 20 or less, and up to 30 in the fourth through eighth grades where some this year are in the low 20s. The average ratio at the high school will be 24 students to one teacher with actual class sizes varying widely, as they do now, from the teens to the mid-30s depending on subject.

Given the pending retirement of music teacher Randall Walker who spends two periods a day at the high school and the remainder of his time at the elementary school, a group of concerned parents attended last week’s board meeting prepared to do battle to save music and art programs in the schools.

“We feel very strongly that every child needs the arts as an essential part of their education and we want to work with you on creative solutions so we continue to have art and music in the core curriculum next year,” said the group’s spokesperson, Angela Gutermuth.

Traverso said every plan being considered for next year continues to include art and music at both the elementary and high school levels “and this board has always taken that position. A significant amount of money goes into those programs and we still have people on staff qualified to teach art and music. It will happen.”

He said he expects to present a proposed class schedule at the board’s next meeting in March.