Gary Community School Corp. Lays Off 169 Workers

If you have never heard about the Gary Community School Corp. then you do not feel alone. It is kind of a strange name for a school system. For those of you who have not heard about the school before here is a look at how they choose to describe themselves, “The Gary Community School Corporation is committed to the effective engagement of staff, students, parents and community in providing a quality education in a safe and orderly environment. We hold high expectations that all students will be prepared to function successfully as productive, responsible and caring citizens in a diverse, global, technological society. The Corporation will assume the responsibility for student progress at all levels ensuring that the requisite skills, knowledge and dispositions are acquired.”

This week the school corporation has sent out layoff notices to almost 170 of their teachers in order to cut back on the schools budget and set things to right. The school sent out layoff notices to 169 workers in the district.

These job cuts are more than enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current federal guidelines. As a matter of fact it’s more than enough to qualify thrice over. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government describes a mass layoff action, “Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” With a mass layoff the school has to give the workers time to prepare for the job losses, and time for the community to prepare for the overall loss of income.

The school is making all of these cuts in order to shore up the holes in the budget for the coming year. The school needs to cut back a sizable amount, about $11 million, from the overall funding it is budget and has chosen job cuts as the best way to do that. These cuts are actually pretty steep when you get down to it. They are losing slightly less than 25% of their staff, about 23% of their teachers in this layoff action. Sadly the school expects more layoffs to come from the administrative and support staff before the beginning of the next school year, but for now only time will tell.

Gary is, of course, not the only school district to face layoffs in the last couple of months, as budgets get tighter and tighter. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage of layoffs in the Reading school district here is an excerptthat will get you up to speed in no time at all, “In Reading things must be pretty bad because the city is getting ready to cut back on their staff by a significant number. The city schools will be laying off 364 workers in order to bring its budget back into balance for the coming school year. The 2012-13 school year budget was passed yesterday and it comes with some pretty serious cuts to the local schools services. These cuts, which are being made in order to shore up a $40 million hole in the budget for the coming school year, will not only include more than enough layoffs to qualify as a mass layoff action but will also include the closure of five schools in the district and some serious cuts to school services. Though at the time being the school board is not being clear on which of the service cuts they will make and which they will cut.”