Layoffs a certainty for Lynn schools

LYNN – Superintendent Catherine Latham presented the School Department’s preliminary budget to the School Committee Tuesday night, detailing sweeping cuts that will eliminate over 130 jobs, four vocational shops and close the Ford School Annex.Facing a budget gap of over $4 million due for the most part to the slumping economy, Latham and her staff built the $107, 390,394 budget from ground zero in the months preceding Tuesday’s meeting, warning throughout that jobs and programs would take a big hit unless funding miraculously appeared from the state.The projected 2010 spending plan is a $451,000 decrease from the current fiscal year 2009 budget.Of the 133 proposed staff layoffs, 99 are teachers, although Latham said she plans on retaining 15 of those licensed employees as on-call in case a need for an extra classes open up in September.The additional cuts include 11 administrators, 10 para-professionals, six clerks, six school monitors and one store keeper.As a result of the teacher cuts, class sizes are expected to rise slightly in most schools, English as a second language will be eliminated in kindergarten and Lynn Vocational and Technical Institute will close four fledgling shops.Sixteen layoffs will also come as a result of closing the Ford School Annex, a grades 6-8 program housed on Bennett Street.Despite the closure, Latham said the Ford will remain a K-8 school, with most middle school students moving over to the Ford’s main building on Hollingsworth Street which previously housed grades K-5.Those students who are attending the annex from out of district will be displaced among the city’s other three middle schools, Breed, Pickering and Marshall, depending on which part of the city they live.”We have been working with (Ford Principal Claire Crane) to make this work and we have budgeted whatever she needs for her school,” said Latham. “She seems confident that she can keep her school as a K-8 program up there on the hill.”Latham said some small renovations would be made to the Hollingsworth Street school, including a consolidation of computer labs to the basement floor and the removal of a few walls.She told the committee that the move is a one-year trial and that the school would return to a K-5 structure if the K-8 is not working out well by the start of the 2010- 11 school year.At LVTI, where the department has been working to restructure shops for several years, four vocational offerings will become extinct. Latham said that machine shop, marketing, painting and design and one computer-related shop would be eliminated, based, in most cases, on lack of interest.Latham noted that painting and design is not a state-approved program and said the machine-shop program contains only students who have been placed in the shop due to disciplinary reasons and knows of no student from the shop currently working in the industry.The machine shop is expected to receive a makeover in the future and could return to include more of an engineering component.While cuts to shops were made, Latham did bolster LVTI’s academic lineup, adding a full-time Spanish teacher and multiple social studies programs that will help the school add more electives that are aligned with those at English and Classical.Other staffing cuts include guidance councilors and one academic dean at the administrative level.Latham also said the department would not fill open administrative positions, such as the Deputy Superintendent slot she vacated when she was hired as superintendent.One concern among School Committee members was the loss of all six school monitors, which combined with the elimination of school resource officers from the police department budget may make for a dangerous atmosphere in secondary schools.Latham told the committee that she is holding out hope that she can use some of the money reserved for the 15 on-call teaching positions for re-hiring monitors if class sizes remain at a reasonable level.The budget does detail a rise in class size