CMS Preps For 600 Teacher Layoffs
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education moved a step closer Tuesday night to the grim reality of having to layoff upwards of 800 employees, including about 600 teachers, in response to a funding shortfall that could require the district to cut $80 million from its budget.
With a 6-3 vote, the board rejected a motion to consider a 10-percent pay cut for all school employees as a way to prevent massive layoffs. Instead, the board with the same 6-3 vote approved criteria that Superintendent Peter Gorman will use to craft what was euphemistically called a “reduction in force”: In addition to 541 active teaching positions and about 60 unfilled slots, the list includes 19 school psychologists and about 250 non-instructional positions still to be determined. Under the plan, assistant principals would be “demoted” from 11-month to 10-month employees, with a corresponding reduction in salaries.
“I can’t get my head wrapped around it, my head, heart and soul,” said board member Richard McElrath, who along with Kaye McGarry and Joyce Waddell voted to delay moving forward with job-cutting plans until other options, including across-the-board salary cuts, were more thoroughly explored.
“I believe we’re asking this generation of children to pay for our mistakes,” McElrath said. “There are going to be some children who are going to suffer because we didn’t have the nerve to roll our sleeves up and say this is our problem and we’re going to solve it.
A 10-percent salary cut for all district employees would have provided a workable, albeit not perfect solution, he said. The move, which CMS could make without state approval, would have saved about $63 million and been more equitable than wholesale teacher layoffs.
“We have 19,000 employees,” McGarry said. “This would, instead of eliminating 600 teachers, share the pain across the entire district.”
Even board members who voted against putting that option into action agreed to continue studying it, but not while delaying plans to prep for job losses. Those details needed to be addressed now, board member Tim Morgan said, to give Gorman and CMS operational flexibility to meet a May 15 deadline for providing notice to employees impacted by the reduction in force.
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