Mar 11, 2009 1:27 am US/Pacific
LAUSD Approves Impending Layoffs
LOS ANGELES (AP) ―
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Superintendent Ramon Cortines says the notifications do not necessarily mean that workers will be fired.
CBS
The Los Angeles school board has voted to send notices of impending layoffs to more than 8,800 teachers and other employees.
The Board of Education for the nation's second-largest school district approved the action Tuesday after chanting teachers and some parents disrupted the meeting and forced it to be moved to a cafeteria.
The protest began Tuesday outside the site of a Board of Education meeting at which Superintendent Ramon Cortines was scheduled to present a plan aimed at reducing a $718 million budget deficit for the coming year.
The notices will go out by March 15 and the actual number to be laid off will be determined before July 1.
Superintendent Ramon Cortines says factors that will determine the actual number of layoffs will include the effectiveness of an early retirment incentive package and the amount of money the district may receive from the federal economic stimulus.
In January, the school board voted to authorize Cortines to send layoff notices to as many as 2,290 nonpermanent teachers with the least seniority.
A week later that Cortines said he would not be making any mid-year job cuts.
Officials with the teachers' union, United Teachers Los Angeles, have criticized the district for any possible cuts among the teachers, saying the district should cut administrators out of the budget before firing teachers or making reductions that would affect the classroom.
The teachers' union said some volunteers may engage in civil disobedience and be arrested at the protest.
(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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