Schools consider layoffs

• By CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jun 18, 2009 - Page: 1B

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The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board tonight will consider giving administrators the green light to give pink slips to as many as 100 teachers, but hope continues that the school system won’t have to use that power.

Chris Trahan, spokesman for the school system, said the 100 figure “continues to fall almost every day and the hope is that by the time school starts, we will not have to let anyone go.”

The possible layoffs are a result of the state’s recent decision to take over four Baton Rouge schools and the school system’s decision to close two others. The school system must ensure jobs for any tenured teachers from those schools who want to remain in the parish system.

The School Board will consider the proposal for a reduction in force at its meeting tonight, scheduled at 5 p.m. at the School Board Office, 1050 S. Foster Drive.

The system’s reduction-in-force policy calls for “last one hired, first one released,” but only in certain categories, said Elizabeth Duran Swinford, associate superintendent for human resources. She said she is not ready to say which job categories would sustain layoffs.

Prior to the January vote by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, Superintendent Charlotte Placide warned state officials that layoffs were a possible consequence of the takeovers of low-performing schools. BESE, however, went ahead and placed eight Baton Rouge schools in its Recovery School District.

Four of those eight schools — Dalton and Lanier elementaries and Crestworth and Kenilworth middle schools — are under contract with private charter school organizations.

Swinford said only one of the 206 educators at those four schools has requested leave to work at these new schools. The rest have elected to seek transfers to other jobs in the school system or search for jobs elsewhere.

The long-planned closure of Greenville Elementary and the recent decision to close low-performing Lee High School rather than let it be taken over by the state have also contributed to the glut of teachers.

By state law, the school system has to place those with tenure in another teaching job even if means forcing out other teachers.

Swinford said her office is going further, trying to find jobs for non-tenured teachers from these schools as long as they’re certified.

Swinford’s office made several moves to avoid layoffs, starting in January by limiting most new hires to temporary positions. School officials thought until recently they’d dodged the bullet.

But in the past two weeks, the school system has sharply curtailed new hiring, what some jobseekers were calling a “hiring freeze.” Swinford said there was no freeze, because there are still jobs being filled in a few critical shortage areas.