67 teacher jobs nixed for 2012

Facing what it calls financial exigency as the 2012 fiscal year budget is crafted, the Lafourche Parish School Board authorized a second-straight year of reduction in force and the elimination of 67 teaching positions.

The teachers who held those positions, all certified, will be placed on the district’s displaced teachers list and offered different positions, determined by attrition and decided by seniority and certification level.

“Now, when we say positions are eliminated, that doesn’t mean people,” said Louis Voiron, supervisor of personnel and administration for the school board. “We’re looking at a net of about 67 positions being eliminated, but that will not be 67 teachers being laid off.

“Attrition is going to take care of quite a few of those positions. We just don’t really know yet how much attrition there’s going to be because a lot of people wait until May to let us know that they’re retiring.”

This is the second consecutive year the school board has employed reduction in force, also known as RIF, in its effort to present a balanced budget.

Last year, facing a separate budget crisis, the district laid off all of its uncertified teachers, as it eliminated 73 full- and part-time instructional jobs and 72 support positions.

Prior to RIF, the school board faced a budget deficit of more than $5 million, a $2.33 million shortfall in the general fund and a $2.9 million loss in federal funds. The majority of the slashed jobs consists of interventionists and literacy coaches, Voiron said.

The district had been receiving grants to pay interventionists’ salaries. Now that the grants will not be awarded, the district has cut all such positions.

The statewide teacher and school employee retirement systems are the cause for the shortage in the general fund. The percentage each district needs to pay into the teacher’s system increased 8.2 percent from the 2010 fiscal year to 2012 and 6.5 percent in the school employee fund over the same span.

Member and employer contributions and investment returns pay into the state’s retirement system.

The system’s unfunded accrued liability, essentially bond payments the system must pay within 30 years of activation, has increased almost two-fold in the same span. Don Gaudet, LPSB business manager, said the reason for the increases is poor investment returns.

“Investment earnings have been relatively low for the last few years so that the employer rate has had to be increased to make up the difference,” Gaudet said.

Other positions in the Lafourche district that were eliminated include one paraprofessional and three full-time positions in the music program.

“Some of these [displaced teachers] will start getting phone calls as early as next week,” Voiron said. “We won’t wait until May to start filling vacancies for next year, but we anticipate more vacancies between now and May, which gives an opportunity for more people to get in.”

While the district eliminated all non-certified positions last year, it still staffs employees with alternative certification, which must be renewed on a yearly basis.

Voiron said teachers with this distinction would be the last group to be offered jobs, unless staff with full certification cannot satisfy the needed certification level.

For example, a teacher with alternative certification in middle school would be asked to fill such a position if the remaining fully certified teachers serve elementary schools.

Not all schools will lose positions. The state-directed Minimum Funding Program, which doles out a set amount of money per student per school, set losses and gains in various Lafourche schools.

“If a school has a declining enrollment, then that could mean that they’re going to lose teaching staff,” Voiron said. “That happened at some schools, and in some schools, they had an increase in enrollment, so they had an increase in teaching staff.”

The current teachers on the displaced list can remain there until August 2012, when the remainder would be laid off.