Reading Schools Layoff More Workers

It looks like bad news is coming to the workers of the Reading School District. This week the Reading School District employees took another hit as they found out that they are losing more of their compatriots to the districts new school budget. 90 notices have been given out to workers employed by the schools, letting them know that a job with the Reading schools will not be in the future for the next school year.

As some of you may recall that we have talked about losses to the schools staff in the very recent past. This is, in fact, the second round of cuts that the school has made to the staff for the coming school year in the last couple of weeks. For those of you who missed on out our earlier coverage here is an excerpt that 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 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.”

So, with the 90 notices given out this week the school is looking at more than 400 job losses, making it a mass layoff action. 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 defines the term, “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. As you can see this is more than enough to qualify for mass layoff protection. While this will give workers some extra time to prepare, it cannot save their jobs from being cut when all is said and done.

The layoffs are set to impact 65 teaching assistants and 22 members of the secretarial staff. For the time being that is all of the details known. No information has been released about when exactly the layoff notices are set to go into effect and no word on what kind of severance the workers who are soon to be displaced may be eligible to get when the layoffs do begin.