Modesto City Schools Cut 113 Jobs

It looks like more and more job cuts are coming to departments of public education across the nation. This time around it is the workers of the Modesto city schools and their support staff who are going to get the boot from their public education programs. In the 6 to 1 vote Modesto city school district voted to cut out 113 jobs in school system. Of the total 113 jobs to be cut 64 of the workers are going to be cuts made from the city’s preschool programs.

These complete and total cuts, which represent the entirety of the preschool program, would lead and sane and rational person to the conclusion that program is actually being closed down. Interestingly enough, the program is not closing at all it’s actually expanding. The city is set to offer three new half-day head start programs starting the next school year. If that fact leaves you scratching your head and puzzlement, wondering why an expanding program would set out to lay out all of its existing workers right before they expand, then you’re not alone. No this is not program is not set to privatize, and no they don’t expect to bring workers in from another area.

The city is doing what seems to be a political maneuver in order to get the union for the workers to come to the negotiating table with a much weaker hand then they have in the past at least according to sources close to the union. With serious problems in many school districts in the union this level of cuts are not that uncommon. For those of you who do not remember our earlier coverage of the problems in the stat of California, here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed on just how bad the problems can be, “According to information released by the California Teachers Association an estimated 19,500 classroom teachers were given layoff notices over the past couple of weeks. The layoff notices had to be given by the 15^th of March in order to be legal under the laws of the state of California. So if an educator did not get a layoff notice by that date then they are free and clear, at least until next years deadline. The cuts, which are coming because of the need to cut 20 Billion in funding from the state education budget…”

At least in this little corner of the state of California the Head Start program will, however, still be taking some serious funding cuts in order to make ends meet. The program is expected to lose about $1.3 million, roughly 15 percent, of the overall funding for the program for the school year. How they plan on achieving the goal of more classes with no staff is really one that will require a bit of explaining. This may in fact explain the point of all of the layoffs. While it is in no way confirmed at this the time city could be planning to privatize the program.