Sulphur Springs School District Governing Board members approved layoff notices for 21 employees at their meeting last week.

Layoff notices will be sent to three assistant principals, nine K-6 classroom teachers, eight K-6 teachers who are not assigned to classrooms and one instructional technology teacher, according to the Governing Board’s meeting agenda.

This comes just weeks after the Castaic School District announced layoffs due to falling enrollment numbers.

The Sulphur Springs School District currently houses 5, 428 students but that number is expected to decline.

District officials must send the layoff notifications by March 15 in order to prepare for the closing of certain kinds of services because of overstaffing, declining enrollment and budget concerns for the 2015-16 school year.

A resolution allowed certified permanent, probationary and temporary personnel to be exempt for the layoffs due to Education Code 44955, which allows certified employees with special training, experience or credentials which others with more seniority may not have, to be spared from layoffs.

For employees which began employment at the same time, seniority was determined through a point system. The system will be done for each employee and numbers given to them even if not threatened with being laid off.
Layoff notices will not be official until the distict’s 2015-2016 fiscal year budget is approved.