LA schools eye layoffs amid $200M budget black hole

The Los Angeles Unified School District is weighing mass layoffs as it faces a deficit of nearly $200 million – driven by huge salaries and plummeting enrollment.

The board is expected to meet next week to decide whether to drop the ax on staff as projections say it will have a $191 million black hole by the end of the school year.

A whooping 90 percent of LAUSD’s $18.8 billion budget is blown on workers, with new teachers earning around $70,000 per year and many earning well into six figures.

Meanwhile student numbers across the region have depleted by 13,500 to 389,000 over the last academic year – the highest rate in the country.

CEO of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team Michael Fine, told Ed Source: “When your cuts are driven by declining enrollment, which means declining caseload, you’re not left with a whole lot of choice.

“Where you need to cut then is the classroom. Because you need fewer classrooms, you need fewer teachers, fewer aides, fewer folks that are at the sites directly serving kids.”

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If the firings get the greenlight next week, staff will be told whether they are terminated by March 15 due to California employment law.

LAUSD is not the only school district under pressure, with the Sacramento City Unified School District and Pasadena Unified also facing the squeeze.

But it comes amid a mass strike in San Francisco – the first in 50 years – as thousands of teachers across 120 schools walked out of class this week demanding a nine per cent pay rise.

Around 50,000 students were out of class since Monday while the SFUSD was losing up to $10 million per day.

But on Friday morning a tentative deal was struck between the unions and the district to end the demonstrations, with classes set to resume from Wednesday.

The two-year deal will give teachers the equivalent of a five per cent raise over two years and, in a big win for the United Educators of San Francisco, the district will offer fully-funded healthcare for dependents starting next January.

The union said San Francisco teachers receive some of the lowest contributions to their health care costs in the Bay Area, with some having to pay at least $1,200 a month for a family health care plan.

San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Maria Su said: “This is truly monumental. For the first time in our school district’s history, we are providing full family health benefits.”