Farmington

FPS teacher layoffs down to about 72 thus far

By David Wallace
C & G Staff Writer

FARMINGTON — The Farmington Public Schools assistant superintendent for human resources said his staff continues to call back laid-off employees this summer.

David Ruhland gave a report to the Board of Education July 20 using numbers compiled the prior week. He said the numbers will continue to change through the summer and into the school year.

“The Legislature to some extent helped, in some ways hindered, from a timing standpoint, with their late retirement incentive that was offered. It really kicked things back quite a bit as far as throwing a new dynamic into June,” said Ruhland.

The district named 435 teachers on its layoff list earlier this year to comply with its labor agreements. The district actually sent 166 pink slips, but the layoff number is now less than half that figure.

“We’re probably down more about 72 right now,” said Ruhland.

“The budget reduction model that the board was working from was projecting a reduction of about 110 teachers, and then on top of that, we had the building closures, which provided some efficiency in our classrooms with some additional reductions of staff,” said Ruhland.

He reported the numbers in a July 13 memo for the board members.

“Because of the early retirement incentive, we ended up having 58 teachers take a retirement. I still at that time had 78 teachers out on layoff, and although I had five teachers at that time take a leave of absence, I had 27 return, so basically a net difference of 22.

“When you shake all those numbers together, as of the memo, we had 114 teachers that were no longer with us, but only 78 of them are actually, or were actually on layoff,” said Ruhland.

“I think I’m pleased to say that as recently as this afternoon my staff and I were working on the assignments, and we were calling back eight more teachers because of title positions that were filled, intervention positions that were filled and a leave of absence that came up as recently as today, and a late retirement that we were accommodating for the fall,” said Ruhland.

“It continues to trickle in, and that will happen all the way through and really into the start of the school year, so there’s no one time that I could really come to you and say, ‘This is it,’” said Ruhland.

He also updated board members on the status of other bargaining units.

In April, Ruhland was authorized to put the entire nine-member Farmington Central High School staff on the layoff list, because the district did not know how the alternative high school would operate in 2010-11.

However, “the district is continuing to operate it for next year, and we only had to displace one teacher,” said Ruhland.

Movement within the administrative bargaining group meant planned reductions happened without layoffs.

“Within our administrative group, the budget was looking at a reduction of about 6 1/2 positions, but through the course of the spring, we had three retirements and we had five administrators that ended up moving back into teaching positions and out of the administrative group,” said Ruhland. “So for this year, we actually have made the administrative reductions, at least by number.”

In the bargaining unit that represents clerical, secretarial and paraprofessional employees, he said 34 people retired, three resigned, and in early June, the unit had 41 layoffs.

“They’ve called back 16, and they continue to have paraprofessionals called back because of the special ed process of identifying … a need for one-on-one care,” said Ruhland.

“I expect the 62 (the number of reduced positions) will continue to shrink throughout the summer, and of the 19 paraprofessionals that are still laid off and the six secretaries, I expect that we’ll probably call as many as a third of those back,” said Ruhland.

The state’s retirement incentive swung the district from laying off custodial and maintenance personnel to hiring five of them.

“Through the budget reductions, we were anticipating 17 reduced positions, most of those because of the building closures that no longer needed servicing and a little bit more efficiency in the department,” said Ruhland. “We also just tightened our belts and reduced some of the custodial maintenance staff. So we really thought in the spring that we were going to have around 25, 26 custodial maintenance people that were going to get laid off.

“But then again, we had the retirement incentive that came through, and through that process, we had 28 custodial staff, utility people, retire, so all the people that would have gotten laid off retained their positions, and as of the moment, we have five custodial positions posted for hire,” said Ruhland.

As of July 23, three positions were posted on the district’s website, www.farmington.k12.mi.us/employment.

The district intended for its bus driver workforce to remain flat, so the retirement incentive resulted in some hires.

“We had 16 bus drivers take the opportunity to retire, and (Transportation Supervisor) Bill Tousley has been very busy hiring new bus drivers,” said Ruhland.

Board Secretary Deborah Brauer appreciated the work to bring people back.

“I just want to thank your staff and yourself for the incredible work you’ve done this summer,” said Brauer. “It has been a rocky summer, and it’s taken a lot of patience and kindness.”

You can reach C & G Staff Writer David Wallace at dwallace@candgnews.com or at (586)498-1053.