GILROY
– California’s budget crisis has found more local victims, about
two dozen non-teaching staff members at Gilroy Unified School
District.
GILROY – California’s budget crisis has found more local victims, about two dozen non-teaching staff members at Gilroy Unified School District.
School board trustees approved layoffs, as well as reductions in work hours, for 25 positions ranging from school office clerk to special education support staff. The cuts will save GUSD $422,000 in its effort to trim more than $1 million in spending to offset a reduction in state funding.
The school board’s decision met with friction from several GUSD staff members. Some staff wore buttons with the phrase “A Fair Share Not the Full Share,” referring to what some GUSD employees believe are disproportionate cuts between administrators, teachers and so-called classified staff, such as instructional assistants, janitors and office clerks.
“It just seems like they always look to classified before they look to cutting other things,” Rita Delgado said.
Linda Piceno, GUSD’s Assistant Superintendent of human resources, says the cutbacks are egalitarian. When GUSD made its first round of layoffs and reductions, it sliced 5 percent of teaching and administrator jobs. Another 15 percent of management level jobs were cut or reduced.
For classified staff, 8 percent of the total classified work force lost their jobs or had hours reduced, Piceno said.
Delgado takes statistics like those with a grain of salt. She said last year, for instance, work hours for the district’s teacher recruiter were reduced. The recruiter was then moved into a vacant administrative spot elsewhere in the district and a new recruiter was brought in to work part-time.
“That’s not a cut, that’s restructuring,” Delgado said.
Delgado, an account clerk for GUSD, represented classified staff Thursday night at the special school board session. She gave trustees a California School Employees Association document called “20 ways to save money without reducing service to students.”
Some of the recommendations in the document include requiring administrators to spend time in the classroom, levying a parcel tax and eliminating perks such as mileage stipends for top level administrators.
