Easton School Board Cuts 17 More Teachers
Easton school directors vote to lay off 17 middle school teachers, plus one assistant principal.
The Easton Area School Board continued shedding school employees, eliminating the jobs of 17 middle school teachers and its assistant principal following a lengthy executive session Tuesday night.
After an executive session that lasted two hours and 30 minutes, the board took swift action that took just a few minutes in slashing positions.
The cuts came on top of the 47 teachers the board voted on recently who would not be returning for the 2012/2013 school year.
"We said we would continue getting ready for the budget," Board President Robert Fehnel said. "We had a $6 million shortfall looking us in the face."
Fehnel addressed the 20 people in the audience who waited through the executive session for a meeting which was supposed to start at 8 p.m.
"Obviously, we're here to discuss personnel," he said. "We had a lot to discuss."
While the meeting was just expected to discuss the furloughs of 41 para-professional personnel, the board instead first voted to cut the 18 positions at the middle school.
They are:
- Two science teachers.
- Two Social Studies teachers.
- Four math teachers.
- Four reading/English teachers.
- On art teacher.
- One computer education teacher.
- Two health/physical education teachers.
- One writing teacher.
- One assistant principal.
The board did not identify the names of the people losing their jobs.
The cuts came without comment from board members and the public also did not speak.
It was unclear whether some of the furlough positions at Easton Area Middle School were separate from the cuts. But there were 12 positions on that list.
The other furloughs included five at Easton Area High School, five from transportation, five from Paxinosa, four from Cheston and one each from Shawnee, March, Tracy and Palmer schools.
The board also voted to eliminate the positions of printing services manager and benefits coordinator for the district.
In the first wave of cuts, the teachers either had their contracts suspended or simply not renewed, part of a larger move to cut more than 100 jobs to balance this year's budget.
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Paxinosa Elementary School
1221 Northampton St, Easton, PA -
Cheston Elementary School
723 Coal St, Easton, PA -
F. A. March Elementary School
429 Reeder St, Easton, PA
louis kootsares
11:33 am on Wednesday, July 11, 2012
teachers educate what do assistant principals or other vice administration positions do except get rich return the admistrations back to the levels of past and class sizes to 60 years ago besides administration being overpaid drains on the school budgets maybe there ought to be a clse investigation on all the other countries who have better systems than our own and copy .. ps we should also have mandatory drug testing for all "educators" maybe sobrity tests its a shame there is not a test to avoid sleeping with students
Anonymous
1:03 am on Thursday, July 12, 2012
Unless students moved out of the district, how in the world does this make sense.
To start with some smart cuts...forbid ANY school (except for emergency) to have "half days" and waste the same gas as the full days. Consider going to the 4 day a week class schedule as adopted in many other schools to save resources. These may not be the answer to all the problems, but lets start thinking outside the box here. What do kids REALLY need. They need the student to teacher ratio to be reasonable and they need parents who are going to take away all their electronic toys so that they can focus on school and donate the money to the school instead of getting their kids the latest most expensive phone. When you give students the "best" cell phones you are taking away their drive to earn it themself.
ted.dobracki
8:47 am on Tuesday, July 24, 2012
4 day a week school could be a way to achieve the benefits of year round school without paying for 180 days. It could also increase the capacity of schools by 80% by still using the schools 5 days a week.