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Lodi Unified School District board to mull layoffs

By News-Sentinel Staff
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 6:13 AM PST

Comments (15 comment(s))

At a special meeting tonight, the Lodi Unified School District board of trustees will be asked to approve eliminating the equivalent of more than 45 positions in the administrative office under a reorganizational plan recommended by Superintendent Cathy Nichols-Washer.

The cuts, which would go into effect for the 2009-10 school year, would save a little more than $3 million. They were first brought to the board Jan. 13.

The following is an updated list of the positions that may see layoffs with annual cost savings in salary and benefits provided by the district:

10 teacher coaches, $890,560

8.2 custodians at various sites, $280,587

6 coordinators (curriculum and instruction department), $762,750

6 administrative secretaries (curriculum and instruction department), $328,890

2.5 PC technicians, $116,760

1 Child Welfare and Attendance advisor, $50,049

1 administrative secretary (community relations department), $61,762

1 (vacant) account clerk, $54,398

1 typist clerk (health beneifts department), $60,506

1 budget technician, $63,179

1 administrative secretary (purchasing department), $56,011

1 construction project specialist (facilities and planning department), $83,079

1 administrative secretary (facilities and planning department), $58,392

1 personnel assistant, $67,842

1 typist clerk (personnel department), $48,418

1 (vacant) grounds worker, $49,658

.5 typist clerk (child welfare and attendance department), $24,482

.81 (vacant) prevention specialist, $43,519

Reduce work year of warehouse delivery position, $24,464

Tonight's meeting begins at 6 at the James Areida Education Support Center, 1305 E. Vine St. It is open to the public.

Reader Feedback

tokaymom wrote on Jan 28, 2009 4:40 PM:

" For your info "bjd" those salaries do not include benefits I work for the district. The salaries on the website are for classified personnel at the school sites. Personnel working at the district office are considered confidential employees and start off making $5.00 to $10.00 more hour than at the school sites which is really pathetic since the majority of the work is done at the schools. The district office is just a Taj Mahal with over paid workers. The district needs to keep cutting the fat from that building. Also why are they paying for a new computer system which is costing over 15 million dollars when people are losing their jobs!!!!!! "

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roni95242 wrote on Jan 28, 2009 11:06 AM:

" You are welcome. Most of the jobs that were cut needed to be but, we still need more and I agree with the threat statement we are always threatened if we speak our mind!They need to make the Top end cuts and if anyone takes a pay cut it should be the top brass not the secretarys and Janitors that is just stupid!!
see the new sup is NOT a good ol boy so she is chopping and she needs to chop higher!!you go Ms Washer11111111 "

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bjd wrote on Jan 28, 2009 10:47 AM:

" The salary figures they are listing are total cost to the district including benefits/ins. etc. The Typist Clerk that they listed at over $60,000 actually only makes anywhere between 30,000 and $38,000 depending on how long they have been in the district, not $60,000/year. If you go to the LUSD website and click on Employment you can see a salary schedule and how much these positions actually make, it's way less than what you see here. "

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edumacation wrote on Jan 28, 2009 10:10 AM:

" reality1 10:09- I think you are on to something here. 1)We are relearning the fact that public education in California is all about the adminsitrators, bureacracy, edumacators and the textbook publishers. Today a single textbook can cost over $100. there was a time when the state published all the K-6 textboks at a substantial savings to the taxpayers. The new textbooks are filled with white (blank) spaces and pretty pictures. The beautiful color printing on quality paper is extremely expensive. Some textbooks remind me of very expensive comic books, lost of illustrations and minimal text. No wonder kids can't read?

2) Top heavy adminstrations of most school districts demand control via micro management. Authority can be earned through respect or it can be demanded by threat. The larger school districts like the LUSD use the threat method. If you control the budget, evaluation function, and the HR department, you have control. What we need is an objective third party of (non-obsequious) volunteers to design the reorganization. This will prevent the tendency of managers to punish dissenters and the honest and to reward the "YES" men, sycophants and loyalists. "

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edumacation wrote on Jan 28, 2009 9:46 AM:

" One personnel game that is being hatched is to "abolish the job" but promote the person. This is a typical ploy to punish good workers who are not saluting the fearless leaders. First you abolish lower paid jobs, and use the money "saved" to promote friends and cronies. Last year this happened when our Acting Superintendent was given a huge raise for "doing two jobs". What actually happened was First he was promoted, and shortly thereafter the previous job was assigned to his assistant, with ANOTHER promotion. Within days he was no longer doing "two jobs", but instead received equivlanet to over one million dollars in increased pension benefits for about 100 days of the temporary promotion. Not bad for a temporary job. We must look carefully not only at the position, but on all the little "I'll promote you, if you promote me games that arise during a reorganization. Loyalists to the managers will be rewarded with promotions, and anyone who speaks out about waste and abuse will have their jobs eliminated. We get rid of 8 custodians and have dozens of bureaucrats hiding under their desks. "

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edumacation wrote on Jan 28, 2009 9:35 AM:

" If you want to see administrative waste and bloat first hand, visit the Lodiusd.net website and click on "departments". There is enough pork in there to to gag a pig. "

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reality1 wrote on Jan 28, 2009 9:03 AM:

" Thank You roni95242 I was taking it not knowing LUSD creative job thinking. Get rid of it. Good call. "

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Tokaymom wrote on Jan 27, 2009 10:43 PM:

" I can't believe that just because Typist clerks work at the district office making 48,000-60,000 a year more than a tenured teacher makes. These clerks make all this money yet they have no degrees, but just a typing certificate to their name. Whereas teachers have to continously keep updating their credentials year after year. If a typist clerk is going to continue making the same salaries as teachers then they should have to work for it also; by taking classes to update their skills(just like teachers) and maybe it will get them off from playing on the internet all day.


By the way Teacher Coaches are not working teachers, its just a fancy name for a wasted job. The job is supposed to help first year teachers yet they never leave the district office to do their job. "

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weezer wrote on Jan 27, 2009 3:21 PM:

" Typist clerk at $48K per year?
Wow! Where's my Mavis Beacon typing software? I'm in the wrong profession. "

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OTH wrote on Jan 27, 2009 1:44 PM:

" How about somebody at the top that makes six figures? How about 2 of them? "

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LUSDParent wrote on Jan 27, 2009 1:35 PM:

" Over one million dollars spent on Curriculum and Instruction Coordinators and their secretaries? No wonder LUSD is in a financial bind! Add in the "teacher coaches" and that's nearly another million dollars. These cuts need to be made. "

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roni95242 wrote on Jan 27, 2009 12:53 PM:

" The teacher/coaches are nnot teachers and coaches. They are teacher coaches that coach teachers from the District office.
The teachers at the sites are their students.
I just wanted to clarify that for you reality1 these positions need to be cut! "

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loadeye wrote on Jan 27, 2009 11:39 AM:

" Reality1, on this I agree. Union or not, pass out the notices and get rid of both the deadwood and the non-performers. The pork has to be trimmed, so why not cut those higher paying positions and then the problem is only to move that employee to a much lower paying position and be done with it. What's wrong with completely eliminating the specific jobs of those who need to go? Get over your denial, LUSD, and make those cuts because there are certainly many more coming the next two years. "

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loadeye wrote on Jan 27, 2009 11:33 AM:

" Shouldn't those teachers recruited from the Phillipines be the first to be laid off? "

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reality1 wrote on Jan 27, 2009 10:09 AM:

" I can see some of the cuts but 10 teacher/coaches? What about ADA? What do you do with the extra students these teachers have? Are you going to cut football coaches or table tennis? At (10)=$890560.00 you must say your going to cut your high end teachers? Certainaly not the low end teachers. How do you plan on cutting tenured teachers? Just pick the people you wnt to fire and say see ya? Does'nt make sense to me. "

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