163 teachers get pink slips

By Kathryn Eident
Globe Correspondent

More than 160 untenured teachers in Waltham received pink slips Thursday as school officials laid the groundwork for as many as 30 permanent layoffs, according to Superintendent Dr. Peter Azar.

While the majority of the teachers will be rehired for next year, school officials handed down the notices as they cope with a 5 percent cut to next year’s $63 million budget, he said in a presentation to the City Council’s Finance Committee Thursday afternoon.

“The reason we went so deep was because there are so many unanswered questions at this point about where the cuts will be,” he said.

After final cuts are made, school officials anticipate eliminating as many as 30 teachers through layoffs and another 30 or so through retirements and resignations. State law mandates that school departments notify teachers of layoffs by June 15th at the latest, he said.

The laid-off teachers, who have been working for the district for less than three years, would be eligible for unemployment after their contract expires June 30th. School officials will notify the teachers they plan to rehire after they reposition tenured teachers in the district, he said.

“My hope is to put people back in the same position or a similar one,” he said. “We will try to recall teachers as soon as possible.”

The School Committee must cut $3.1 million from the budget to bring it in line with the $59 million budget the Mayor presented to City Council last week. The new budget is $1.3 million lower than this year’s budget of $60.7 million, thus necessitating major programmatic and staffing cuts, Azar said.

School officials have been grappling with the cuts since late April, after Mayor Jeannette McCarthy asked all city departments to cut their budgets by 5 percent. Since then, both Azar and McCarthy have presented School Committee members with proposals on how to make the cuts.

School Committee members will be discussing both plans at their next meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, June 3rd at the Waltham High School.

No matter what members decide though, the cuts will be deep and the changes will be drastic, Azar said.

“We will end up with a considerably different program of study than we currently have,” he said.