SEQUIM — Although it’s just two weeks before school lets out for the summer break, the atmosphere on Sequim’s campuses isn’t as giddy as usual.
Twenty of the Sequim School District’s 73 paraeducators — assistants and tutors who help certified teachers in the classroom — have received layoff notices as part of budget cuts wrought by the state’s financial crisis.
And the paraeducators are only part of the picture.
Earlier this spring, Sequim Superintendent Bill Bentley warned that some $1.4 million would have to be removed from the 2009-2010 school year’s budget — and the cutting would include at least $576,000 in certified teachers’ salaries.
Teachers
After two public meetings and lengthy discussions with his financial planning committee, Bentley announced in May that 10 certified teaching positions would be eliminated before school starts next September.
Yet, because several instructors are retiring or resigning this year, Bentley and the Sequim School District Board of Directors haven’t had to lay off 10 certified teachers.
Just three received “reduction in force” notices, Karen Sande, the district’s personnel specialist, said this week.
But for noncertified staff, the cuts went much deeper. Letting paraeducators go was particularly painful for School Board member Virginia O’Neil, who called them the “backbone” of Sequim’s schools.
“It breaks my heart to do it,” she said.
“The overall impact to the [educational] program is huge,” Bentley added.
Other positions cut from the Sequim budget include that of the district’s sole school nurse, Marthe Fortman.
Laying her off will save $50,000, but “we will need to contract out for some portion of [nursing] services,” Bentley said.
Among other school support staff receiving layoff notices this spring are two secretaries and two custodians.
Many other employees, from bus drivers to district office workers, will see days trimmed from their 2009-2010 contracts.
As 11 certified teachers retire or resign, many of their positions won’t be filled.
Class, program cuts
The cuts will mean reductions in Sequim High School’s art, social studies and language arts classes, Sequim Middle School math and electives, four positions at Helen Haller and Greywolf elementary schools and in the high, middle and elementary school libraries.
The school board also plans cuts in athletic programs and instituting a pay-to-play system that would cost students $75 for each sport in which they participate.
The school police officer program is also slated for elimination, since the $40,000 in grants that funded it is no longer available, as is First Teacher, the $42,000 program that provides activities, a newsletter, a library and a playroom for families with preschoolers.
Yet Bentley said that, because of employee attrition, some laid-off staffers may get their jobs back.
“We have probably heard from most people” who plan to leave the district, “but some people may make decisions over the next couple of months,” he said.
Librarian
Jo Chinn, the state’s Outstanding Teacher-Librarian of the Year in 2008, is one of the soon-to-be-retirees. At 53, she already has 30 years as an educator behind her.
Asked whether she looks forward to having more time to read, Chinn said she’s only begun to imagine which books she’ll choose.
“I don’t even know what I like,” she said. “All I read is kids’ books.”
The full-time librarian beams when she talks about her successor, language arts teacher Elizabeth Lawson.
“She was my student,” who went from Sequim to earn degrees at Western Washington University and the University of Washington, said Chinn.
But “because of the budget cuts,” she added, Lawson will be a part-time librarian and a part-time classroom teacher.
As students came in to browse in her light- and book-filled haven, Chinn sought to sound optimistic.
“Hopefully the economy will recover” and funding for librarians will be restored, she said, “because this is a full-time job.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
