By Steve Alexander Reporter
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Published: Mon, May 05, 2008 - 9:39 pm
Steve Alexander
Right after the meeting, the list of eliminated positions was released.
The board voted 5-0 to approve Superintendent Roy Nichols' plan for budget cuts and other moves to get the system on the road to having the savings required by state law.
Jennifer Rowe and Holly Spavey attended the meeting to see if they would have jobs.
They are third year non-tenured teachers in special education and speech therapy.
When asked what the waiting has been like, Rowe said, "Its awful, its awful. She (Spavey) has three young children four years old and under. I have two four years old and under and its awful for our families. My husband is a police officer and we just don't know what we're going to do if I don't have a job."
When asked what if she thought about what was going to happen in the future, Spavey said, "We'll have to figure it out."
Superintendent Nichols said, "492 total employees would be terminated. The classified employees that received notification of non-renewal almost assuredly will not be coming back. The certified employees, the teachers, many of them, will be coming back as per usual."
After the board meeting, Rowe and Spavey checked the list to see if they would be cut.
Both found out they were on the list to get pink slips.
Board members say they hope many teachers will be re-hired once the state education budget is finalized.
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If you read the article in the Mobile Press today it will upset you even more. The School Board says that they do this every spring and that it is not something to worry about. Their must be something wrong if this happens every year. They did say that this year was worst than ever before. Why are they not held accountable for this?
The other part of the article that made me really mad was this.
The list of names approved Monday included some top administrators, but board member Fleet Belle said he is concerned that the cuts didn’t reach high enough.
Absent from the list were any of the recently added $100,000-plus salaried assistant superintendents. Nichols said he plans to cut the number of assistant superintendent spots by two. Because one slot is open and another will soon be vacant due to a retirement, he said he did not include any of the remaining dozen on the list.
That is another 1.2 million dollars.