The Los Angeles Unified School District board approved a $7.5 billion budget Tuesday that includes more than 100 layoffs of classified employees and the reassignment of hundreds of others.
The hardest hit employees are library aides, with 30 of them being laid off, leaving 43 elementary schools without library staffing.
Other employees affected are clerks, payroll specialists, accounting technicians, teaching aides and security aides.
No teachers are facing layoffs.
Superintendent Michelle King said the district received some additional funding in the governor’s recent budget revision. She also said that while the district is anticipating a balanced budget for the 2017-18 and 2018-19 fiscal years, the district still has an ongoing structural deficit — thanks in part to declines in enrollment — and it is projecting a $422 million shortfall in the 2019-20 fiscal year.
She also noted: “Uncertainties at the federal level compound our local issues,” pointing out President Donald Trump’s proposed multibillion-dollars cuts to federal education programs.
Letetsia A. Fox, president of the local chapter of the California School Employees Association, told the Los Angeles Times that 87 of her members will be laid off and 120 reassigned.
“Itís like we’re being punished for asking for and receiving a raise,” said Fox, the senior financial manager for Dorsey High School in the Crenshaw district.
Her union members, who include library aides, clerks, accounting specialists and technicians, received a 9.96 percent raise over a three-year contract that ends in June. Fox’s members earn as little as $13 an hour, she said, even though the district announced three years ago that all employees would earn at least $15 an hour.
In all, Los Angeles Unified employs more than 60,000 full- and part-time workers.
