Teachers picketed this week at Rogers High School in Puyallup in hopes of saving fellow teachers from the budget ax.
The picketers said the school district should dig deeper into its funds balance, delay buying textbooks and do whatever else it can to keep teachers who are about to lose their jobs. Otherwise, they said, students will suffer in jam-packed classrooms.
“We love where we’re teaching. We would love to stay here,” said Rogers teacher Anna Sutherland, speaking for herself and her husband, Nathan Sutherland, a first-year teacher at Edgemont Junior High. Both have received lay-off notices.
“But on the other hand ... if we got recalled (for a job), we don’t know when that would happen. We don’t feel comfortable waiting till the end of August or till September,” Anna said Friday, as she held a sign reading “Teachers not textbooks.”
To help close a $13.8 million shortfall, Puyallup sent notices last month to 69 teachers and other certificated staff districtwide, telling them they likely won’t have a contract next school year.
Some could be rehired if vacancies occur and they meet the qualifications, said Lorraine Wilson, Puyallup’s assistant superintendent of human resources. In addition, the district didn’t offer contracts to about 40 additional teachers on one-year contracts, who were either retirees or hired to fill another teachers leave of absence, Wilson said. The district still is determining how many support staff positions to reduce.
Rogers teacher David Tate, a building representative with the Puyallup Education Association, contends the district could afford to keep more teachers if it used its reserve funds and put off some of its curriculum expenditures.
“This reserve fund is supposed to be for emergencies,” Rogers teacher Kay Locey said. “In our view is this is an emergency.”
Deputy superintendent Debra Aungst said the district is using $2.6 million of its fund balance in next year’s budget. That will leave $10 million in the fund balance when the 2009-10 school year starts in September. That’s the amount it needs to save under a district policy requiring the district to have at least 5 percent of its general fund budget in the fund balance.
In addition, she said, the district is cutting its instructional materials budget to $950,000, half of which is used to replace damaged textbooks or consumable workbooks.
Aungst said the district must prepare for more funding woes in the 2010-11 school year. The fund balance, she said, “is a onetime source of money. … People assume you can just charge it to your fund balance and all is right. All that does is deplete your fund balance and put off your inevitable reduction.”
Tate said those who’ve received layoff notices do much more than teach. They tend to be young adults who do many of the activities that keep kids engaged: chaperoning at dances, coaching sports, serving on school committees, advising student clubs.
Anna Sutherland teaches advanced placement and regular English courses during the day, then works after school as an assistant coach for girls track. Her husband coached football and was the assistant wrestling coach at Edgemont.
Since receiving the layoff notices, they’re considering graduate school or seeking teaching jobs in another district. “Almost every school district is hiring in the areas we’re endorsed in,” she said.
Debby Abe: 253-597-8694
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