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Delay may mean fewer teacher layoffs

JANESVILLE — Today is the last day teachers may declare their intentions to retire this year if they want to qualify for certain retirement benefits.

With the district looking at shrinking enrollments, the number of retirees is crucial in deciding whether layoffs will be needed before school starts in September.

The teachers contract requires the district to issue any layoff notices by May 1 of the preceding school year.

But this year is different.

The Janesville Education Association has agreed to extend the layoff deadline to May 15, giving officials more time to find ways to avoid layoffs.

The Janesville School Board on Tuesday delayed voting on the district's 2009-10 staffing plan until April 28, which also gives the administration more time to make adjustments.

Eighteen retirements and resignations have been confirmed so far, Personnel Director Steve Salerno told the board Tuesday.

But some of those retirements are not in areas that make it easy to avoid layoffs, Salerno said. That's because not every teacher is certified to teach every subject or grade level.

Salerno would not tell the board how many layoffs he is looking at. He said that number could change, depending on whether teachers turn in their retirements today, and he didn't want to give out "misinformation."

Salerno based his staffing plan on a loss of 216 students by next fall.

But board member Tim Cullen noted the estimate is based in part on middle and high school course sign-ups in January. Since then, those students' families might have decided to leave town, some of them leaving to work at the General Motors plant in Arlington, Texas, Cullen said.

Cullen and board member Lori Stottler worried the district would be caught with too many teachers in the fall after the true enrollment is known.

"Things are changing rapidly, dramatically, throughout the entire school year," Cullen said.

Stottler called for delaying a vote on the staffing plan to avoid locking the board into a certain number of teachers. Stottler said she hoped the extra time would help the district avoid layoffs.

JEA President Dave Parr told the board more time could allow shifts in teaching assignments to avoid layoffs.

For example, if a librarian was facing layoff, another librarian qualified to teach second grade could volunteer to fill an open second-grade teacher slot, leaving a librarian position open for the threatened librarian, Parr said.

Parr said the district is better served if it keeps teachers it's already trained rather than losing them to layoffs over the summer and hiring new teachers for positions that come open later.