WBTV 3 News, Weather, Sports, and Traffic for Charlotte, NC-Hundreds of CMS teachers to be laid off

Hundreds of CMS teachers to be laid off

By Dedrick Russell - bio l email

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - The unemployment numbers are very likely to go up in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools (CMS).

Soon, more than 500 CMS educators could be out of a job.  The plan is to layoff teachers and assistant principals to help fill a huge budget shortfall.  Many believe the layoffs will affect students.

"Teacher cuts mean higher class sizes," said Mary McCray, President of the Char-Meck Association of Educators.

McCray is concerned about Tuesday night's school board meeting.  The school board voted to begin the process of laying off hundreds of teachers if CMS needs money to fill a budget shortfall. 

Superintendent Peter Gorman said cutting teachers from the payroll is inevitable.

"I don't think it's possible to do cuts when you get in the range of $90 million and still function as a district without hitting the classroom," he said.

If the number of teachers decrease, the class sizes will increase.  Some say the extra students will make things worse in the classroom, but others disagree.

"It's not about class size, it's about teacher quality," Gorman said. 

But some disagree.

"CMS may say that but if you talk to any classroom teacher, adding three or four does make a difference in how the teacher delivers," said McCray.

Teachers will be eliminated because of their job performance and others will be let go because they don't have many years of experience.

The Char-Meck Association of Educators plans to host more events to fight for teachers' jobs.

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(The following information is from Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools.)

CHARLOTTE, NC - Dr. Peter C. Gorman received approval March 10 from the Board of Education for a plan to reduce staff in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. The criteria is attached.

The approval, required by Board policy, outlines the criteria and process for identifying and notifying staff if a reduction occurs.  The reductions may be necessary because of state and local funding shortfalls that could require the district to cut as much as $87 million from the 2009-2010 budget.

Under the criteria and process approved by the Board, performance will be the first factor in choosing which teachers and assistant principals are not retained. Years of service will also be considered in some cases. The cuts can be made in career teachers (those with more than four years experience) as well as non-career teachers, under the proposal approved by the Board.

The district also protected certain groups of teachers. Math and science teachers, as well as those who teach Exceptional Children, career and technical education and Teach For America recruits are shielded from the budget cuts.

"We are planning for these job cuts because we have to, not because we want to," Dr. Gorman said in an email to principals. "We still don't have specific numbers for our funding. We want to share as much information as we can as early as we can. We are preparing for the worst and hoping for the best, and we want our employees to be able to do that, too."

No teacher cuts will be made in the current school year.

Instead, the district will make final cuts later in the spring for the 2009-2010 budget. The purpose of establishing criteria and a process for reductions is to keep the process fair and impartial.

The district has about 19,000 employees, with approximately 9,000 of them in teaching jobs. Last year, the district budget was $1.2 million.