BUSD Approves Final Layoffs of 39 Teachers

The Beaumont Unified School District Board of Trustees voted 3-2 Friday night to finalize the layoffs of 39 teachers and counselors.

Prior to , held at the BUSD board room, more than two dozen community members-- some of them teachers on that layoff list-- gathered to show their opposition to the cuts.

Single parent and Palm Elementary School fourth grade teacher Nicole Simmons was one of a half dozen who spoke directly to the board.  She said she showed up to the meeting to represent herself and 12 other teachers who refer to themselves as the "positively peeved pink posse"-- a group of teachers who are upset by the cuts-- and provide a face to the issue.

"It is rumored many of our jobs will be reinstated after the 15th," she said while addressing the board.  "Some will be saved due to retirement [of other teachers].  So why is this not already happening? How much longer do we have to be in limbo?  All of us deserve answers-- sooner rather than later."

Simmons told Banning-Beaumont Patch that even though there is hope that her job may be brought back if an agreement is struck between the district and the Beaumont Teachers Association, she's still worried about things like health insurance and paying the bills.

What's more, she, like many of the other teachers affected by these cuts, doesn't know where she'll land if she is brought back, she told Patch.  

Will she be at the same school?  Will she be able to continue heading the glee club of 30 students she started this year?  Those were just some of the concerns she laid out to Patch.

In the end, though, the comments were not enough to stop the layoffs.  The layoff resolution was passed 3-2, with board members Janelle Poulter and Mark Orozco opposed to the resolution implementing the layoffs.

"We've been working on this issue for months and months," said Beaumont Teachers Association President Jody Behrens-Blaul.  "There are lots of ways to save some jobs, and we're disappointed.  But we're hoping to save as many [jobs] as we can through some concessions and hope to keep the teachers, a significant number, employed by taking pay cuts."

Behrens-Blaul said that the BTA negotiating teams will be meeting again with the district next Wednesday, May 16, and is hoping to have a tentative agreement that would save at least half of the jobs affected by Friday's news.  

She says the 380+ teachers in the BTA are willing to take 14 furlough days over the next two years if it means bringing some of their colleagues back to work.

Friday's passage of the layoffs is part of a state-mandated deadline to notify teachers several weeks in advance to the possibility that their job will not be around the next school year.