The Redlands school board on May 12 followed through with laying off some 14 percent of the support personnel the district had informed in January might lose their positions
No teachers were impacted by the diminution of the district’s personnel. Nevertheless, the board instructed Superintendent Juan Cabral and Director of Human Resources Cynthia Quezada to prepare to give pink slips to 19 of the 135 library aides, special education instructional assistants health care staff told their heads might be on the chopping block in January.
The board further instructed the district’s top administrators to orchestrate the layoffs in such a way that the support staff drawdown is distributed evenly throughout the district’s 25 traditional schools. This in practical terms means moving roughly 20 other support staff members from one school to another.
Under California law, school districts must issue potential layoff notices to public school workers by March 15 if they could be laid off by the end of the school year and must deliver notice of final layoff decisions no later than May 15.
Cabral was tight-lipped about the reductions, and sought to show no emotion about what had been done.
In addition to the potential layoff warnings sent to support personnel in January, the district issued 91 layoff notices to certificated positions, including 37 teachers, nine elementary and middle school assistant principals, three school nurses, one special services coordinator, one district athletics and student support coordinator, eight academic case carrier counselors, eight elementary school counselors, six secondary school counselors, four librarians, four program specialists and ten adult school teachers and counselors.
The board on Tuesday night did not make good on laying off any of the certificated personnel.
The elapsing of the deadline today, May 15, however, does not mean no certificated personnel will be let go this year. Certificated employees, as opposed to support personnel, under the state education code have the ability to challenge the March 15 preliminary layoff notices and also have “bumping rights,” meaning they can request to take the position of a teacher with less seniority who is not being laid off. Exercising bumping rights or making challenges are up to the discretion of individual teachers.
Reversal of layoffs by challenge are not automatic, and a final decision is subject to the decision of an administrative law judge who considers each challenge on its individual merits.
While it is not known how many of the 91 certificated positions targeted for possible elimination, if any, the district intends to actuate, a good number of those certificated personnel exercised their option to make a challenge, each of which thereby involved a hearing before the administrative law judge assigned to Redlands Unified. That judge has requested and was granted an extension to May 22 by which to finalize his decisions. The school board must finaolize its firing list within five days of the administrative law judge’s final ruling. It is thus anticipated that the school board will publicly announce whether any teachers, principals or other certificated employees will depart at the end of the current 2025-26 school year by May 27.