10:00 PM PDT on Friday, July 10, 2009
Some Moreno Valley Unified School District teachers and counselors will have to wait until Monday to learn if their new contract for the 2009-10 school year will continue to be in effect. Their jobs were cut by the district at the end of the 2008-09 school year. On June 25, they received a call asking them to come back and sign a new contract for the 2009-10 school year. Then, on July 2, they got another call saying the district may renege on the agreement.
"It's been a roller coaster," said Janet MacMillan, president of the Moreno Valley Educators Association.
Trustees were scheduled to vote on cuts affecting the equivalent of 97.5 full-time positions Friday during a special board meeting. After a long closed-session meeting, the vote was postponed until Monday."We're still trying to work out some alternative options," Superintendent Rowena Lagrosa said.
About 150 teachers, counselors, friends and family members held a protest against the cuts Friday. Lizeth Piskulich, a third-grade teacher at Towngate Elementary School, turned down an offer at a Temecula charter school when she learned the Moreno Valley district was hiring her back. Now, that Temecula position is no longer open and she may lose her Moreno Valley job.Piskulich signed a contract and is legally bound to start work Aug. 10, even though the district could let her go effective Aug. 14, she said."I don't know how they can get away with this," Piskulich said.
California Teachers Association President David Sanchez was at Friday's meeting. He urged trustees to use one-time federal stimulus money to save jobs. Sanchez said districts throughout the state are making midsummer cuts, he said. But this is the first time in his 15 years with the teachers union that he's seen districts take advantage of an education code that allows them to do it, he said.
Reach Melissa Eiselein at 951-763-3462 or meiselein@PE.com
The prospects for healthcare reform may be chillier than DC weather, but Democrats in the House and Senate are turning their attention to another warmer but still significant national issue: the increasing number of runaway and throwaway youth who are being forced into prostitution. In response to the growing concerns that desperate, runaway teens will be forced into prostitution in a sluggish economy, Congress is pushing several bills to improve how runaway kids are tracked by the police, fund crucial social services, and prevent teens from being caught in sex trafficking. Here's the gist of what the new legislation is trying to accomplish:
