Cloverdale students walk out of class to protest teacher layoffs
Hundreds of Cloverdale High School students walked out of classes on Monday morning to protest teacher cuts at the school. The group walked the length of Cloverdale Blvd. encouraging motorists to honk for support.
John Burgess/The Press DemocratPublished: Monday, March 15, 2010 at 9:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, March 15, 2010 at 9:30 a.m.
Sonoma County schools are facing more cuts and teacher layoffs, with budget crises gripping the largest number of the county’s 40 school districts in 16 years.
More than 185 Sonoma County teachers received pink slips by Monday’s state notification deadline, part of the more than 22,000 teachers and other school employees statewide who have been told they might not have jobs next year as the state ratchets back what money it gives to education.
The layoff notices, which are required in anticipation of cuts in May, brought a student walkout at Cloverdale High School and will be followed by a planned protest at the state capital next Monday by students of higher education also frustrated by the state of education.
In addition, scores of other secretarial, custodial and food services jobs are slated to be cut but those positions don’t fall under the state’s March 15 notification deadline and some districts are still assessing the number of cuts needed.
Under mounting financial pressure, seven of Sonoma County’s 40 school districts are expected to remain in qualified financial status, meaning they won’t meet reserve and cash flow minimums over approximately three years.
In addition, board members for the Cotati-Rohnert Park district, the third largest district in Sonoma County at about 6,000 students, last week declared it is not certain it can meet its financial minimums this year or next. That formal “negative” designation comes despite deep cuts the district has approved to deal with declining enrollment and staggering funding cuts from Sacramento.
In total it marks the greatest number of financially strapped schools the County has seen since the early 1990s, according to Denise Calvert, assistant superintendent of the Sonoma County Office of Education, which has budgetary oversight for the county’s 40 school districts.
“Generally districts come out of qualified and back to positive status, but this particular year, the state budget problems have been so protracted, it’s harder to get back to positive,” she said.
In Cotati-Rohnert Park, board members have approved the closure of one of two middle schools and expect to cut 29 middle and high school teaching positions, while hiring back 9 teachers at the elementary school level.
In qualified status are Forestville, Piner-Olivet, Sebastopol, West Sonoma County, Cloverdale, Geyserville and Healdsburg.
Piner—Olivet is cutting costs by shuttering Piner Elementary School next fall, and other districts are issuing scores of pink slips in preparation for the announcement of even deeper fiscal woes when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger releases a revised state budget in May.
“I would anticipate more bad news because there is a $21 billion gap and the governor was counting on $6 billion from the feds and that’s not going to happen,” Calvert said.
“You have to be prepared for the worst because in school districts, 85 percent of your budget is staffing. That is why the (layoff) notices become so significant — because there is very little room elsewhere in your budget to cut,” she said.
Many local school officials said they were aggressive in issuing layoff warnings with the hope that at least some jobs would survive.
“Just to protect ourselves financially, we (noticed teachers) as if we were eliminating class size reduction but we don’t believe we’ll have to,” said Bellevue Superintendent Tony Roehrick.
Of the 26,500 pink slips issued to teachers statewide last spring, about 10,000 teachers were ultimately not laid off; more than 16,000 teachers were laid off. In the past two years, approximately 10,000 secretarial and custodian jobs have been cut across the state, according to the state department of education.
The cuts have sparked protests up and down the state.
On Monday, more than half of Cloverdale High School’s 470 students walked out of class just after first period began.
“We have a lot of really important teachers, who are really important assets to the school,” said David Whitaker, a senior who helped organize the walkout.
“The teachers were saying they didn’t want us to protest the district because it’s above the district,” he said, noting he wrote a letter to Schwarzenegger protesting the cuts.
“We are hoping that to walk out will bring some light on the situation.”
Most students returned to class before third period so that the school would not lose state funding that is dependent on attendance.
“We didn’t want to defeat the purpose,” Whitaker said. Across the Cloverdale district, more than 15 teachers were issued pink slips, including a part-time guidance counselor at the high school.
That leaves one counselor for the entire high school student body, said Principal Mary Black.
In addition, the counselor who received a pink slip is bilingual — a helpful skill when nearly half of Cloverdale’s students come from Latino families, she said.
“When you are a small school, he is the only counselor — all of the duties fall to him,” Black said of veteran counselor Eric Neel.
All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.