Up to 100 pink slips at Yuba City Unified

Up to 100 Yuba City Unified School District employees will receive layoff notices as a state-mandated March 15 deadline looms.

Superintendent Nancy Aaberg called the notices "'extremely painful and difficult for everyone."

She said the school district hopes that contract negotiations can help resolve issues and "lessen the impacts on our employees."

The layoff notices include 70 teaching and administrative positions that cover part-time jobs as well, and which may be eliminated next school year.

Thirty-six elementary school teachers, one principal and four assistant principals are among those receiving the notices.

School districts often issue such layoff notices to people who are able to return to work because of retirements by other employees and improved state finances.

But the severe financial problems California faces have changed that.

"The likelihood is that there will be some people who may not be able to come back," said Craig Guensler, assistant superintendent for human resources.

Guensler said Yuba City Unified, unlike many other school districts in the state, did not spend all of its federal stimulus funds last year and that the remaining money will help district finances.

"We're a little ahead of the game there," he said.

Yuba City Unified trustees approved the list of layoffs at their meeting Thursday.

Dina Luetgens, president of the Yuba City Teachers Association, said Friday that the teachers union continues to challenge trustees and the district to resolve budget shortfalls "with a minimum of hurt to our students."

"I appreciate the way Marysville (Joint Unified School District) has done it," Luetgens said of school district officials there meeting with staff and seeking public comment on the district Web site.

"We haven't gone forth to the employees and said, 'Help us figure out how we might save money.'"

She said that teachers association members took at 1.1 percent pay cut in 2009-10 and that instructors help solve financial issues by working harder because of budget cuts that have reduced staff.

Aaberg said the March 15 deadline for layoff notices has been in place since she began working in education in California in 1975.

"It comes too early," she said of the deadline amid the fiscal crisis confronting schools.

The layoff notices create turmoil in people's lives that school officials hope can be resolved and layoffs averted, Aaberg said.

Up to 90 Marysville Joint Unified employees, most of them teachers, will receive layoff notices after trustees approved their list Tuesday.

Superintendent Gay Todd has said the district can't avoid layoffs as it did in 2009.

"We will actually have people who will be laid off," Todd said Tuesday.