School superintendent clarifies staff changes
BY DAVE BENJAMIN
Staff Writer

JACKSON - In an attempt to clarify the situation regarding school district staffing for the 2007-08 school year, Superintendent of Schools Thomas Gialanella discussed the issue with the Tri-Town News last week.

He started out by saying there is a difference between people and positions.

"There are 17 less teaching positions in the budget this coming year [compared to] the 2006-07 school year," Gialanella said. "The areas we cut were not classroom teachers. There will be no change in the number of classroom teachers in September due to the budget cuts."

He said there may be positions that are no longer provided, but they are not classroom teaching positions. Specifically, there may be changes in areas such as literary skills, reading intervention and the way enrichment programs are delivered in some of the schools, but the programs will still be there.

"None of the programs were eliminated," Gialanella said. "We adjusted how the programs are delivered. There will be no decreases of classroom teachers. These positions came from out-of-classroom positions."

The superintendent reiterated that no programs were eliminated, but said, "we redid how we're going to use them. We cut back on our basic skills program and we're going to handle it differently, but we still have basic skills teachers. We cut back on our reading intervention program, but we still have a reading intervention program. We just changed the way we are going to deliver that service. Those were the two big ones."

Gialanella explained that in order to cut 17 positions, 28 people had to be cut because two special education teachers were added and nine teachers for Jackson Liberty High School were added to the 2007-08 budget.

"In order to get down to 17 less positions we had to target 28 people," he explained. "We were taking out 28 and adding 11 and that gave us a net loss of 17. The 11 were not the same as the 28."

Gialanella said some of the 28 people who were identified to lose their jobs could still be employed because they had the proper certification in other areas.

"When we handed out pink slips we handed out 22 [because] they were in that change from one area to another," the superintendent said. "Six were reused."

Gialanella said that as of May 15, 22 teachers and two administrators were given slips, but the two administrators are coming back as teachers because they have tenure.

He said that action was the result of a state law which limits the amount of money the school district is permitted to raise in property taxes.

Since May 15, no other teachers have received any notices that they will not be returning, he said.

The superintendent said there should be no changes in class size due to the changes that are being made now. However, class sizes may change in September if there is an increase in student enrollment.

"Regular classroom positions were not touched, but a lot of the these small instructional groups may be slightly bigger because we have less teachers. But that is not what I mean when I say classroom teachers," Gialanella said.

He said he is hoping to be able to bring back more of the teachers who were targeted to lose their positions.