PORT ANGELES — The Port Angeles School District, fresh off a landslide victory with its two-year maintenance and operations levy, is preparing to void pink slips to more than 30 teachers.
“Now we put the budget planning process into high gear,” said Superintendent Gary Cohn on Wednesday.
“And I will be sending out letters rescinding the reduction-in-force letters already sent to staff.”
The letters were handed to staff members whose contracts would not have been renewed had the levy failed.
But it passed — by more than 71 percent in the first tally of more than 10,000 ballots on Tuesday — assuring that the district will have a total of $12.7 million in revenue in the 2006 and 2007 school years.
So the district now faces the task of hiring teachers in a short amount of time.
“We have approximately three-dozen certificated staff positions we believe we will have to fill,” Cohn said.
“That will be mostly teachers at the elementary, middle and high school levels.
“We’ll be posting those positions in the next five days.”
The district will also have some administrative openings which will be announced in the coming weeks, Cohn said.
But teachers are the priority.
“Teachers are the program — they are the ones who make the difference,” Cohn added.
Empty School Board seat
Another slot that will have to be filled this year will be an empty School Board seat.
Jessica Schreiber, who has served on the School Board for three years, confirmed Wednesday that she will leave the district by the end of July — soon enough to allow candidates to file for the September primary to fill her slot.
“I’m going to stay on until the end of the school year,” said Schreiber, whose husband, Eric, a radiologist, will begin working full-time at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago in July.
Schreiber said the fact that voters approved the levy makes it easier for her to move on.
“If not, I would have left so depressed,” she said.
