As you may have noticed from our earlier posts the state of the California schools is precarious at best and it looks like things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. This the time school district that is taking the hit is Orange County. The Orange County school districts sent out layoff notices to a minimum of 1,517 workers, though some sources are estimating that more notices did go out over the course of the week. In that mix are about 244 classroom teachers.

The notices let the workers know that unless serious changes are made to the state budget, or their unions become ready to make some serious concessions, these workers could be out of a job when the school year ends in June.

The prelayoff notices, know as WARN notices, were given out in accordance with the state deadline, which occurred on Thursday. This deadline, which every school in the state must abide by requires a significant amount of advance notice before a school district employee can be cut.

For those of you not familiar with the idea of a WARN notice here is a look at the official definition of the US government, who requires these notices:

“WARN offers protection to workers, their families and communities by requiring employers to provide notice 60 days in advance of covered plant closings and covered mass layoffs. This notice must be provided to either affected workers or their representatives (e.g., a labor union); to the State dislocated worker unit; and to the appropriate unit of local government.”

For those who do get cut the likelihood of finding a job for the next year are fairly slim. Few California schools are hiring at all, hoping to spare job cuts through attrition as older workers leave, and an estimate put out by the California Teachers Association showed that almost 20,000 teachers across the state were given preemptive layoff notices over the last couple of weeks and months.

The amount of money the schools will get, at the number of jobs that they can keep will be decided by the voters of the state. If, in November, a sales tax increase of about ½ of a cent per dollar, along with extra taxation on high income earners, is not approved then the schools will be forced to make some deeply painful cuts to staffing in order to make ends meet. If the plan is approved, and workers make concessions, then the majority of the jobs may be able to be spared. For now all school districts can do is prepare for the worst and then see what happens when the votes are in. If the vote does not pass it is estimated that $8.4 billion will need to be cut from the money given to public schools in the state.

Some educators and parents are worried about the cuts impacting the poorest performing schools more deeply, as well as the overall classroom sizes they will be left with if all of these cuts go through.