SAN JOSE, Calif. — In a spring rite that has become as predictable as the cherry blossoms in the nation’s capital, public school employees throughout California have been warned of classroom cuts as districts face a deadline for issuing layoff notices.
Most years, many of those notices would be rescinded, but this year the ritual is more fraught with uncertainty because of the economy.
The state Department of Education estimates that preliminary pink slips will have been handed to 26,500 teachers by the cutoff today — two-and-a-half times as many as were issued last year.
About 15,000 bus drivers, janitors, secretaries and administrators also were expected to receive the written warnings, said Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell.
Because of the state’s less- than-rosy economic outlook, California’s 1,000 K-12 school districts have been instructed to absorb more than $8 billion in funding cuts over the next year.
To draw attention to the situation, teachers and parents wore pink clothes and waved pink protest signs for a day that California’s largest teachers union dubbed “Pink Friday.”
The second part of this annual ritual is that many, if not most, of the early layoff notices could end up being withdrawn by June, especially if the state can devote some of its federal stimulus money to education, officials said.
Six years ago, for example, all but 3,000 of the 20,000 teacher pink slips that went out statewide were rescinded.
O’Connell, who donned a pink tie for an appearance Friday at a school in San Jose, Allen at Steinbeck K-8, said it is unlikely that tens of thousands of teachers would be let go.
