PE teacher Angie Hicks, who has taught at Isbell for 13 years, is one of several in her department to get a layoff notice. She said she was especially disappointed when she heard that most teachers in her department were getting pink slips. “I was disappointed of course to hear so many of the teachers at my school were being pink slipped, but especially our program,” she added. She noted that with one P.E. teacher left and 200 students, “That’s not gong to work out. We have been hit, I believe, disproportionally.”
Another Isbell teacher, Cari Leidig, received a layoff notice last year, but did not get a pink slip this year. “Most everybody’s been hired back from last year,” she said. “What a waste of resources. A waste of time, of money, of energy, emotion, a waste of morale and teaching time.”
Carolyn Ishida, president of the Santa Paula Federation of Teachers, told the board the layoff resolution was too far reaching. She told trustees, “You reach too far in your layoffs. Are you really gong to have one P.E. teacher left at Isbell School? Are you really going to layoff both band teachers, only to come back three or four months from now when parents start putting on the pressure and say, oh we’re going to reinstate band? Are you really going to take away seven staff members from your Blue Ribbon school that six weeks ago the superintendent was standing there in a photo op, telling everybody we are so proud of this school because only four percent of the schools qualify for Blue Ribbon in the whole 80 years that they qualified for? Are you really going to take away jobs from the school that piloted the new language arts program and now you want everybody else to fall in line behind this program and yet you’re taking away the very people you paid money to train?” She asked the board to re-write the resolution and to remove some of the names on the layoff list.
Board members expressed regret at the action they were taking, but said that felt that they had no other choice. Trustee Tony Perez noted they go through this exercise almost every year.
“This is the hardest thing that any of us has to do,” he added. “Sometimes we’re looked on as heartless individuals, but that’s not the case. We all have hearts. We all love Santa Paula. For us to have to come together at this time of the year to do the same thing that we did last year - to throw out pink slips and put people’s lives in disarray - does not sit well with me and my colleagues. It’s an unfortunate time that we live in.” He noted that the legislature talks about education being the foundation of our nation, but they keep taking from the schools.
