Sweetwater Union High School District Cut 197 Jobs

Jobs in education are shrinking all over the country, as what used to be considered the safe and sound jobs in even the roughest of times become a potential budget minefield. No doubt you will recall our earlier coverage of massive  job cuts in the state of California, but for those of you who missed out here is an excerpt: “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.”

California is not the only state in the union that is being forced to make some very serious job cuts to teachers in order to make ends meet. This time the job cuts are coming to the workers of the Sweetwater Union High School District are going to be taking some serious job cuts in order to keep the budget on track. In the hair thin vote by the school board administrators it was decided on Monday night the 197 teachers would be put out of the job. The job cuts will go into effect on the 15th of this month. The school district official’s vote was three in favor two against the measure.

On the bright side this is not the first time that these teachers are hearing about the layoffs. The teachers in the school district originally received a potential layoff notice in March, in accordance with laws for the school district and agreement with union for the teachers. This vote is just the thing that makes the proposed layoffs final.

All of these job cuts were made to help make up for $27 million hole that the school district has its budget. In order to make ends meet for the next school year the money has to be cut from somewhere, and while the layoff will not make up the whole the budget cuts, they are a substantial portion of the way the district is planning to fix it financial problems.

The left is heavily protested. Many employees were outside with signs, and the meeting room was filled to capacity with protesters. Once the chanting actually stops the meeting dead. The protestors were not able to sway enough members of the school board in order to change the outcome of the vote. A request to move the meeting to a bigger room, in order to let more of the educators who were protesting the layoffs in to the meeting was denied for lack of space. The facility that the meeting was held in holds 110 people. The Sweetwater Union High School District members voted as follows: Arlie Ricasa voted for the layoffs, Jim Cartmill voted for the layoffs, John McCann also voted for the layoffs,  Bertha Lopez voted against the job cuts and the President of the board, Pearl Quinones also voted against cutting the jobs.