Cedar Rapids school cuts will target many first-year teachers

Almost two dozen first-year teachers will receive notice that they'll no longer have a job with the Cedar Rapids school district.

Superintendent Dave Benson said 23 teachers will be notified within the next two weeks.

“This is a real difficult thing to do,” Benson said. “No one enjoys doing this.”

School board members approved the district's $278.8 million spending plan for the 2010-11 school year Monday night, which included several million in budget cuts.

Forty-nine full-time-equivalent teachers and 10 full-time-equivalent custodians were eliminated in the “non-categorical funded” budget, saving the district $4.2 million.

An additional $800,000 was cut from categorical budgets, such as special education and Title I, bringing the total savings to $5 million.

“There will be 61 less teaching positions next year in all budgets,” Benson said.

Some of those positions will disappear through attrition.

Tammy Wawro, president of the Cedar Rapids Education Association, said the notification letters will go out Friday.

Wawro said the number approved by board members is smaller than the initial number proposed by district administrators, although that doesn't make the process easier.

“These are people's lives, their livelihoods, their house payments - we do not take this lightly,” Wawro said.

The decision to reduce staff is tied to the district's declining student enrollment numbers. Cedar Rapids has seen a 4.6 percent decline in the past two years.

The district has 16,755 students this year, a decrease of 207 from the year before.

Benson said the layoffs aren't program specific. Rather than target music or foreign language teachers, the layoffs are across the board at all levels - elementary, middle and high school.

“They are based on student enrollment and program needs,” Benson said.

Still, Wawro said the elementary school specials - art, music and physical education - will take a hit. The district restructured the elementary specials program this year, having teachers travel from school-to-school as needed rather than stay at their home school. Wawro said the teachers will be doing this even more next year.

Monday night's decision marks the first time the district has laid off staff since the 2004-05 school year. Class sizes will increase as a result, but the impact won't be known until this fall.