Newport-Mesa Layoff Notices to Be Sent

More than 100 teachers may be laid off next school year in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, and up to 14 may be dismissed in the Westminster district, officials said Wednesday.

The Newport-Mesa Unified school board Tuesday night voted to notify 147 teachers of possible layoffs. State law requires that preliminary notices be issued by March 15 and final notices by May 15.

“This number is a worst-case scenario, and we have never had to lay off as many teachers as given in the first notice,” said Carol Berg, assistant superintendent of the Newport-Mesa district.

“We’re very concerned. We’re facing a possible $7-million shortfall next year.”

Last week, the Westminster Elementary School District board similarly voted to issue the first notice of a possible teacher layoff. The school board said up to 14 teachers may have to be dismissed because of budget problems.

“We are going through some very grim financial times,” said Barbara Winars, administrator for personnel services for the Westminster district.

Both districts are deadlocked with their teacher unions over unsettled contracts. Proposed raises for teachers are the major issue in both cases.

The Westminster Teachers Assn. is seeking a pay raise under a reopener clause of an existing contract. The group asks a 4% pay raise retroactive to July 1, plus a 2% pay raise retroactive to Feb. 1.

The kindergarten-through-eighth-grade Westminster district, which has about 7,500 students, granted the teachers a 1.5% raise at the beginning of the year and has offered the teachers another 2.54% pay raise retroactive to July 1.

In Newport-Mesa Unified, the teacher union is asking for a 5% pay raise retroactive to the beginning of the school year. Berg said the district has already provided the equivalent of a 5 1/2% pay raise this year to its teachers by a sweeping change in the district’s salary schedule--the chart that determines how teachers get paid for years of service and for added college credit. Union officials have said they never agreed to accept the salary schedule changes in lieu of a pay raise.

Newport-Mesa, which includes kindergarten through 12th grades in the cities of Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, has about 16,000 students.

Both districts have had declining student enrollments for several years. Because state money to the schools is based on a head-count formula, decreased enrollment has meant smaller budgets in both districts. Proposition 13, a 1978 initiative that limited property taxes, restricts a school district from raising its own tax rates without a two-thirds vote of the population.

Newport-Mesa school officials have said an irony of their budget problems is that Newport Beach and Costa Mesa include some of the richest real estate in the nation. But because of Proposition 13, district officials have noted, Newport-Mesa Unified is severely limited in how it can tap that valuable property as a school-tax source.