Dublin teachers, students outraged at more potential cuts ahead of possible strike

DUBLIN — Faced with devastating cuts, Dublin Unified School District teachers, students and their parents are not going out quietly.

Hundreds of teachers, students and residents descended upon the Dublin School Board meeting last week to demand the immediate firing of the district’s superintendent amid districtwide budget cuts.

Heather Campos, assistant superintendent of human resources, presented a proposal to potentially cut over 30 full-time positions and 12 substitute teacher jobs by March, due to what the district said is declining enrollment and budget shortfalls. The district plan to try and cut another $5 million from the budget was met with public outrage and disappointment.

The distraught members who filled the room for the Feb. 10 board meeting, which included Dublin Teachers Association union members who recently voted to authorize a potential strike, stacked dozens of boxes in front of the dais with signs depicting the names of teacher positions that could be soon eliminated. They openly expressed a lack of confidence in Superintendent Chris Funk, and loudly asked that he step down. Funk plans to retire this June.

By the end of the Tuesday night meeting, the board decided against chopping over 30 full-time positions, with Trustee Dan Cherrier the lone vote in favor of making the cuts.

They will discuss their options at the Feb. 24 meeting.

“With all these teachers gone, where are these kids going?” Krystal Shaw, a district teacher, asked the board. “Think about your student in the class with 42 others, and one teacher. Is that the education you want to provide them? Does that inspire lifelong learning?”

The possible layoffs come after the board approved cutting 10 other positions and $6.8 million in budget cuts at its Jan. 27 meeting. Superintendent Funk, attempting to calm the crowd’s fears, said the district does this “every single year,” with March 15 as the deadline to send out pink slips.

“We’re not taking all these positions and cutting them out of the budget. Probably 85-90% of them will be reinstated, but in a different subject area potentially, or sometimes, in the same subject area,” Funk told the board. “It’s simply because we need the flexibility to place them at the right location and on the right subject next year.”

The proposed cuts come with a possible stipulation that teachers who get laid off may later get rehired to different positions. But Funk’s reassurances was enough to quell the agitated crowd.

Campos told the board that the district cannot guarantee all of the impacted teachers could be offered equal replacement work, if the cuts go through.

“You cannot claim to care about students while also removing essential classes like math, history (and) science,” district student Ollie Mironova said at the meeting. “Cutting classes and adding more students to already overcrowded classes hurts both students and teachers.”

The jobs in question include teachers of foreign languages, such as French, Mandarin and Spanish, elementary physical education, social studies, English and language arts. Many in attendance at the board meeting were upset that several teachers for elective classes, such as drama, dance, music and video production, could also be cut.

“We are setting students up for failure as human beings by treating them as numbers and taking away opportunities to learn how to express themselves, how to be part of something bigger than themselves, how to be part of a community,” Claire Yackley, a district choir director for the past eight years, told the board. “When you cut art, dance, drama, band, video production, elementary music – that trickles up. You teach students that creative subjects don’t matter, that there’s only one correct answer, that the world is black and white. And it is not.”

Mia Salazar, a 7th grade Fallon Middle School teacher, expressed her frustration that the board is proposing cuts while at the same time planning to open Shamrock Hills School, a new transitional kindergarten through 8th grade school expected to open later this year.

“Even though our total revenue has increased every single year, Funk continues to propose cuts that directly harm our students,” Salazar said. “Seven elementary school teachers are on the cutting block at the same time that we’re opening a new … school. This doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand how we can be cutting elementary school teachers, in addition to secondary school teachers, at a time when our classrooms are overcrowded.”

School Board Trustee Gabi Blackman said she wanted to wait until the next meeting to make final decisions on possible layoffs and further cuts.

“I think this is a mess, and it’s going to take us even longer to unravel when we finally get the real numbers,” Blackman said.

Board President Kristin Speck said her greatest concern was that students would not get to take the classes they signed up for, and instead be thrust into an electives class that they didn’t choose.

“I understand what needs to be done. I hope and expect that we make this as small as possible. But I want to do the right thing for the students,” Speck said.

By the time the board was ready to push the decision to a future meeting, Campos told her superiors that with some extra work, she believed her staff could possibly make more sense of the numbers before the pink slips go out next month.

“I do believe we can do the analysis necessary to make the decision by Feb. 24, and I do believe this number will go down between now and that time,” Campos said. “I cannot predict how much.”