Woodland Hills teachers speak out after school board votes to reduce staffing across district
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Teachers in the Woodland Hills School District are concerned about cuts to staff and critical services that seem to be coming their way.
On Wednesday, the Woodland Hills School Board voted to reduce staffing across the district by furloughing an estimated 20 positions, roughly 14 of those positions are teachers.
The teacher's union got word of these potential furloughs earlier in April and they say they have serious concerns about cutting services for students.
The issue the district faces is students leaving the district to enroll in outside schools. This results in local taxpayer dollars leaving, which costs the district money.
Annie Briscoe, advocacy coordinator of the Pennsylvania State Education Association's western region, says that they understand what the district is up against, but they really need to investigate these layoffs more closely.
"We are understanding of the situation they are in. But we don't feel like these staffing reductions are going to best suit the needs of our students. Especially when those needs are only increasing."
Briscoe went on to say that the needs of students right now are greater than ever before, especially for those in special education, which may be under the gun due to this vote.
"Here we have students that have increasing needs. So, no longer only academic needs that we are talking about. We are talking about social, emotional learning needs. We are talking about autistic support needs. We are talking about needs associated with different learning disabilities and support services that our special education teachers provide."
Now, the union says that it will evaluate the district's financials and it will determine whether these furloughs were actually within state laws.
