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About 560 educators - including teachers, librarians and counselors - face layoffs next year under guidelines the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board approved Tuesday.
Approval of layoff criteria is the first step toward a worst-case 2011 budget scenario that would cut jobs to trim $100 million from the CMS budget. The plan Superintendent Peter Gorman presented Tuesday calls for laying off 395 teachers and 164 education support positions.
If the board votes to scale back on Bright Beginnings prekindergarten, those teachers would be added with a separate list of criteria.
The vote was 6-3, with the majority saying Gorman's plan is, in Tom Tate's words, "the fairest and best way forward" on an odious necessity.
"I don't want to have to cut the number of teachers we will probably be cutting this year," Tate said. "I don't think anybody wants to do that."
Hundreds of other CMS employees, including central-office administrators, are expected to lose their jobs, but those cuts do not require a board vote. Non-tenured teachers who have low performance ratings or licensure problems would be the first to lose their jobs, along with those who are working under short-term arrangements.
If they don't have those problems, some non-tenured teachers would be protected: Those finishing their first year of Teach For America, those recruited to help with "strategic staffing" turnarounds at struggling schools, and those in hard-to-fill jobs: math, science, special education, English as a second language and Montessori.
