Lee schools reduce 44 positions

By MATT CLARK
Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Lee County school district officials presented a 10-year, $1.9 billion school construction plan and a list of 44 positions they no longer need to the School Board on Tuesday.

To some, it doesn´t make much sense. The district is spending here, but getting rid of people´s jobs there.

“It is our best fiscal policy to plan for tomorrow and for future generations,” board member Steven Teuber said in support of nearly $9 million in land purchases on one end.

“We have to talk to you about a reduction in force and although it´s not a lot of folks, people that had a job this year probably won´t have a job next year,” Superintendent James Browder told the board on the other end.

But it´s not as cut and dry.

The construction, or capital plan, which also accounts for maintenance expenditures, includes the construction of one elementary school in the district´s south zone. The south zone makes up an area south of downtown Fort Myers, including Estero and Bonita Springs, and has seen a decrease of hundreds of students in the last three years.

But in all, the district plans to build 22 schools, including 13 elementary schools, four middle schools, two high schools and three special schools. The plan also includes $356 million in major renovation projects, but none of the money being used for the schools is the same money used to fund employee positions.

The money used to fund the 44 positions that have been reduced comes from the district´s operations fund, which was cut by $20 million this year, has been cut by $29 million for next year and is expected to be cut by millions more in the next few years.

District Human Resources Director Greg Adkins said the positions have also been reduced as the result of a class-size reduction amendment passed in 2002.

“Unfortunately, the current economic situation and the funding we´ve received from the state have required that we move forward in requiring this event,” Adkins told the board.

As a result, the positions, 20 of which are currently staffed by certified teachers, have been reduced. The district uses the term reduced, because the positions haven´t been cut, school officials say, they just are no longer needed. It is not known, though, how many employees will actually be laid off as a result of the positions being cut. That won´t be known for two years.

The system works like this: a position is no longer needed, so the district goes out and finds the least experienced person in the district holding a position similar to the one being reduced. They then place that person on a list known as a “surplus list.” The district attempts to find employees on the list a new position within the district, but if they can´t find one, then the person will end up being laid off. If a position comes open in the district within two years, the employee is given a right of first refusal for that position.

Adkins said he would be meeting with school principals in the coming week. The principals are required to attend the meeting and offer up any vacant positions. Thirteen of the employees on the surplus list have already been placed in new positions, Adkins said.

“We really feel at this point that we can continue to get all of those people placed,” Adkins told the board. “If we still have folks that are on our surplus list as of the 12th, then we will be coming forward to the board with a reduction in force.”

The employees working in the positions being reduced are not teachers in a classroom. Though some of them are certified, all of them work in a support role by helping teachers in the classroom. Among the other positions reduced are school secretaries, typists and custodians. Browder said the district has no plans to lay off any classroom teachers.

“But let me say this out loud, that could change,” Browder told the board. “Everything could change in one year. We are very concerned about our elective teachers given the circumstances around what we are dealing with the class size. It is not what we would think of as the best of times.”

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