Dear Windsor Unified Community:

You may have seen an article in the Press Democrat this afternoon with the alarming headline of “Windsor Unified School District set to layoff 37 teachers at board meeting." The headline is inaccurate to say the least and is unfortunately stoking fears within our community so we wanted to take a moment to alleviate any fears about “staffing reductions” here in Windsor. 

While it looks on paper like we are laying off a lot of staff, especially in our Special Education department, in reality, the FTE number does not equate to a comparable number of job losses. In fact, each year we have to make a similar statement, because what we have to do “on paper” is often not the reality of what happens.

Most of these changes reflect programmatic restructuring within Special Education, including the movement of Resource Specialist Program teachers into Learning Specialist and Case Manager roles to better align services with student needs. In other words, we are changing our model and job descriptions/positions but not eliminating people, however school employment contracts and law requires that we “lay off” the position and then “re-hire” the staff under the new position.

Of the 19 FTE identified in the SPED department, only three positions will not return—two due to retirements that are not being refilled and one due to a program reduction (though the staff member there also has their choice of two roles within the district). No teacher in this section who wishes to continue working for Windsor Unified School District will lose their job as a result of this action, and all affected staff continue to have teaching positions within the district. All affected staff have been a part of these conversations and are fully aware of the changes taking place and are excited for our new model. Their retirement, salary, benefits, etc. will not change.

In addition, the long list of “extra duty” assignments (all the 0.2, .167, etc) are required by law to be laid off every year, and then next year we can rehire them as needed. These “positions” are generally extra sections that our regular full-time teachers take on when an extra section of a class is needed due to enrollment or interest. However, state law doesn’t let us roll over anything over a 1.0 FTE, so each year all the extra assignments must be laid off, and then rehired before school starts. So again, no people will be losing jobs from this decision.

Other reductions are either due to grant funding ending or enrollment needs/interests, or site requests, however, again, the vast majority of staff members have other jobs waiting for them. In reality there is only one staff member, who we are not able to guarantee a position to following this meeting, and they have known for over a year that when the grant funding ended so would their role.

Hope this helps ease concerns about “layoffs” here in WUSD.  We hope to see anyone interested on Thursday!

Jeremy Decker

Superintendent

Windsor Unified School District