Thanks to an additional $385,000 from the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation, the Manhattan Beach Unified School District is able to shorten its potential teacher layoffs for the 2013-2014 academic year to five.
MBEF Nina Patel announced the additional funds at last night's school district board meeting, raising MBEF's previously announced $5 million grant to $5,385,000.
The extra funds are being specifically used to save teaching positions and maintain small class sizes, said Susan Warshaw, MBEF executive director Thursday.
"I was very happy to personally say 'Welcome back,' said MBUSD Superintendent Dr. Michael Matthews late Wednesday. "Delivering the news to staff was a great way to spend my day."
Matthews has publicly said he would keep teachers informed every step of the way since the countdown to layoff teachers began in late February.
Forced to meet a state required deadline of March 15th, by which time all potential teachers who could be laid off must be notified, the school board voted to send out 24.6 pink slips to teachers for the upcoming school year.
Direction from the school board to make budget cuts everywhere else they could then resulted in MBUSD administrators managing to whittle the number down to approximately 11 cut teaching positions.
MBEF's $5,385,000 now means 5 teaching positions will not be filled next year unless more money is forthcoming, said Matthews. Those positions are an athletic director position at Mira Costa High School, a special assignment teacher at Manhattan Beach Middle School, two Spanish teachers and one counselor.
As school administrators were combing through budgets, making cuts items such as books and supplies, so too was MBEF applying the same mindset to their funds.
"We looked under every rock ourselves," said Warshaw. They found $100,000 allocated to the current year for a teaching position that hadn't been filled and moved it to the 2013-2014 grant allocation. "Scrimping and saving" and donations from the Parent Teacher Associations helped raise the additional $385,000 MBEF has granted to be used to keep small elementary class classes small, retain reading specialist jobs and to maintain small humanities and English classes in the sixth to ninth grades.
As for the five remaining positions set to be cut, Matthews said, "The governor's budget just came out, the legislature is still in session... Nothing is done yet. There still may be things that happen that enable us to keep all of our teachers."
He said it's not uncommon for public school teachers to receive pink slips that are later rescinding, even after budgets have been adopted.
MBUSD plans to adopt its 2013-21014 budget no later than June 18th, he said.
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