Modesto City Schools board approves layoffs of district staff. Who will be affected?
The Modesto City Schools board has approved a resolution to lay off classified and classified management services staff for the 2024-25 school year Monday night.
Around 30 positions will be affected by these eliminations ranging from various special-needs, instructional and after-school paraprofessionals to different clerks in the school district.
Soriel Marroquin, a vice president of Modesto’s chapter of the California School of Employees Association, urged the board to vote no on the resolution.
“The district management must consider the human cost of their actions,” she said to the board. “Lives are not dollar signs and our community deserves better.”
Modesto City Schools said this decision was made due to a lack of funds and work in various district programs. The district found that reduction of hours and elimination of classified and classified management positions saved a total cost of about $1.9 million.
Mike Henderson, the associate superintendent of human resources, said the process to determine layoffs and reductions began in January when he met with the union’s leadership several times in February to finalize the layoff list. During the meeting that finalized the layoffs, the union did vote against it.
Henderson said there are 148 classified and one classified management positions on the layoff or reductions list but around 120 of those positions are vacant. He said a portion of the jobs on the layoff list are to eliminate positions the district doesn’t need anymore or job titles and descriptions the district has changed.
“We’re going to review each employee’s situations to determine if those employees have bumping rights to other positions,” he said.
Henderson added the district deliberately did not fill specific positions in anticipation of this decision to try to move staff affected by the cuts into some of these positions. He said there might be a reduction in hours or pay, though, but their goal is for them to have continued employment.
The district confirmed part of the reason for this decision was due to COVID-19 funding ending. Sharokina Shams, the chief communication officer for Modesto City Schools, said an additional $11 million of these funds will expire next year.
“Making the decision to lay off valued members of our staff is very difficult, and we will do our best to identify other positions that they may be qualified for,” she said. “Unfortunately, over the next few years, there will be more of these difficult decisions as we continue to lose one-time funding that was provided to school districts to navigate the challenges of COVID.”
California School of Employees Association Modesto Chapter President Fawn Peterson said she is thankful to HR for finding some funding for positions to remove them from the layoff list and find positions people were able to laterally transition into, but still urged the board to not approve the resolution.
“Twenty of those positions are being laid off because of lack of funds, not due to lack of work,” Peterson said to the board. “So who’s going to do the work? Are you then going to slide that work to an employee who’s already working full time?”
