Dozens of San Diego Unified’s school secretaries, clerks and other staff could lose their jobs at the end of the school year.
On Tuesday, the San Diego Unified school board voted to eliminate 221 classified positions. Of those, 133 are staffed. The rest are vacant.
“We're predicting that we will be able to reassign roughly half of the employees working in positions slated for elimination to other positions,” Superintendent Fabiola Bagula said at the meeting.
After that reassignment process, the district expects 69 people to get layoff notices this month. March 15 is the deadline for districts to tell staff that they might lose their jobs at the end of the year.
“March is very often one of the most difficult times in the school year for a school district,” Bagula said.
Eliminating the 221 positions would save about $19 million, according to the district. In December, district leaders said they expected to face a $47.7 million budget deficit next year.
On Tuesday, employees said the board was balancing the budget on their backs.
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Dawn Basques is president of the district’s bargaining unit for office, technical and business services employees (OTBS.) In an interview Wednesday, she said the layoffs would affect some of the lowest paid employees of the district.
They play important roles for students, she said.
“They're the first ones who get them to school, to feed them, to talk to them, to give them Band-Aids when they hurt themselves,” she said.
The district said certain roles are no longer needed. For example, the district is switching to online enrollment next year, rather than collecting and processing hard copy forms.
Some employees are still expecting heavier workloads after the layoffs.
“People are at their breaking points,” Megan Glynn, a special education administrative aide, told the board on Tuesday. “In my department in 2015, we had seven OTBS members. We have two now. It is the same amount of work on two people, and you are going to vote to eliminate one of those tonight.”
The district says the final number of layoffs will likely be smaller than 69. Some may be able to move into different roles in the district, and the state could send more money to San Diego Unified.
“So much is still uncertain pending the governor's May budget revise, potential retirements, resignations and vacancies,” Bagula said.
Final layoff notices will go out by May 15.
