GUSD looking at pink slips

GLENDALE — With a looming $18.5-million deficit looming on the horizon, Glendale Unified School District officials said Tuesday that 82 kindergarten through third-grade teachers could be laid off if the Board of Education increases elementary school class sizes.

The total number of teachers who would be on the chopping block would depend on how much class sizes were increased, but district officials Tuesday told the Board of Education they were working to bring the number of possible pink slips down to as low as 60.

That would be close to half the 112 teacher positions administrators had been projecting might be cut until now.

“Being under the illusion that people aren’t going to be laid off is absolutely incorrect,” Glendale Unified Supt. Michael Escalante said.

Increasing class size is the only meaningful cost-saving measure school board members could unilaterally implement. Doing so would lower a projected 2011-12 deficit of $18.5 million to $8.5 million, Chief Financial Officer Eva Lueck said.

District officials said they continue to review elementary teachers who are equipped with credentials to teach elsewhere in middle or high school. But they warned that layoffs were inevitable.

“The chances of saving everybody in this situation is zero,” Escalante said.

Teachers must be notified of potential layoffs by March 15, and school districts typically notice twice the number of employees it intends to layoff. Board members expect another presentation on class size increases and finances before they take action March 2.

“We have done everything in the world trying to avoid this decision . . . but one we’re absolutely forced to deal with [it],” Escalante said.

About a dozen parents from R.D. White Elementary School on Tuesday asked board members for budget-fighting alternatives after sitting through a presentation on which elementary school floor plans lent themselves to classroom expansion.

But district officials said there’s not much concrete action anyone can take to offset rising costs with revenues near 2004-05 levels.

“Our challenge is, we did do [salary] increases,” Lueck said. “But our revenue dropped down after we agreed to the increases . . . [and] our revenue is basically flat from 2004-05 levels.”