10:00 PM PST on Sunday, January 10, 2010

By DAYNA STRAEHLEY
The Press-Enterprise

The Riverside school board will vote on laying off 124 kindergarten through third-grade teachers before the 2010-11 school year when it meets today.

The Riverside Unified School District board meets at 5:30 p.m. in the auditorium of Riverside Adult School, 6735 Magnolia Ave.

Classes in kindergarten through third grade will grow to 30 students next year, and larger classes require fewer teachers.

A resolution on this evening’s agenda calls to issue layoff notices to 51 third-grade teachers and 73 kindergarten through second-grade teachers. The 124 full-time teachers will get notices before the state deadline of March 15 informing them they won’t have jobs after this school year.

Those cuts will save the district $5.9 million. Officials are trying to close a projected $37 million budget gap for next year.

At its Dec. 7 meeting, the board identified $9 million of those cuts, including the layoffs.

The board also agreed to eliminate three principal and assistant principal jobs that are now vacant to save $404,252, and agreed to later identify $2.6 million in budget cuts from specific programs for which the state allows districts flexibility.

Those programs include adult education, textbook purchases, school and library improvement grants, arts and music, deferred maintenance, teacher credentialing, and teacher training.

Superintendent Rick Miller and Deputy Superintendent Mike Fine said in December they don’t know how they will make the rest of the needed cuts. The superintendent’s budget advisory committee will recommend priorities later.

Miller called the cuts to teachers horrible.

“We cut $25 million last year,” Fine said last month. The district has cut $66 million since 2002, “and every cut gets harder,” he said.

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