Suburban School District Announces More Cuts
CHICAGO (WBBM) - In 2010, School District U-46 laid off more than a thousand teachers and staff, but but spokesman Tony Sanders said this year, they will only be reducing staff by 180.
"Of those 180, there are teachers in there, there are teaching assistants, there are other staff that are included in those reductions. We notified all the employees on Friday that this was happening. Many of these people are expected to be re-hired before the next school year," Sanders said.
LISTEN: Newsradio 780's Lisa Fielding Reports
Podcast
According to Sanders, a lot has changed in the last year for the district.
"First and foremost, the General Assembly overrode a Governor's veto that fixes our funding problem. So that provides us about 15 million dollars for the current school year. The other piece is that we made enough reductions last year that there's not much more to cut."
Sanders said the district still has a structurally deficit but overall, its more financially sound, at least for the short term. The School District U-46 Board of Education is expected to approve the cuts at tonight's meeting.
The district has no plans to reduce other groups of employees, including secretaries, custodians, food service workers, bus drivers or maintenance and grounds staff.
District U-46 has 41,000 students and 5,000 employees.
