Layoff notices that were sent to 505 Los Angeles Unified School District teachers and counselors will be rescinded, district Superintendent Ramon Cortines announced Friday.

“We empowered local schools to make the purchasing decisions they believe will make their instructional program successful,” Cortines said. “We are able to rescind these 505 reduction-in-force notices because of the decisions that were made by school site councils.

“Despite challenges from the state’s continuing budget crisis, LAUSD’s plan is working,” he said.

The rescinded notices affect 271 non-permanent, secondary English teachers; 114 non-permanent, secondary social studies teachers; and 120 non-permanent, secondary counselors.

The district’s Board of Education voted April 14 to eliminate nearly 5,400 positions in hopes of closing a budget deficit that was then estimated at nearly $600 million.

The exact number of actual anticipated layoffs has been steadily dropping, thanks to the use of federal stimulus funding and early retirement programs.
In March, layoff warning notices were sent to 8,846 certificated LAUSD administrators, teachers and support personnel.

Of those notices, 6,326 have since been rescinded, or the employees have been reassigned to other positions. With the latest round of rescissions, 2,520 layoff notices will remain in effect — representing a 5.7 percent reduction in the district's 43,959-strong workforce. Those layoffs will take effect at the end of June.

But teachers and union officials have continued to blast the district, accusing it of hoarding the bulk of the stimulus funding instead of using it to save jobs. Cortines has denied the accusation, saying the stimulus funds have been used to save jobs, but the district still has a multimillion-dollar budget deficit.

“I am still deeply concerned about the number of employees being laid off, but we are doing everything we can to save jobs,” Cortines said.

Some teachers have been on a hunger strike to protest the planned layoffs. One of them told KFWB radio that the rescission of 505 layoff notices was a positive step, but the hunger strike will continue until even more action is taken to save jobs.

“What we would also like to see is a decrease in class sizes in our schools,” he said.

A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said rescinding the notices was a step in the right direction, but more work needs to be done.

“We need to work together,” Duffy said of Cortines. “We don’t always agree. On this we don’t agree, but I’m going to thank him for his diligent work in finding a way to bring these people back and tell him that he needs to continue to work very hard with me to find a way to bring back all the other teachers.”