Board expects to send layoff notices

Bus drivers will not be affected by the reduction-in-force notice, the school board president said.
By JEANNE STARMACK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
AUSTINTOWN -- The township school board is expected to vote Thursday to notify more than 200 nonteaching employees in the school district that they will be laid off at the end of the school year.
The reduction-in-force notification for members of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees Local No. 194 will be on the agenda at Thursday's board of education meeting, said board president Michael Creatore. A reduction-in-force notice is sent every year; the difference this year is that it went to the entire union.
Creatore said the majority of the OAPSE workers will be called back.
He said the reduction notice is unionwide except for bus drivers, which the district knows it will need, because the district could not get an extension past a deadline for the notification from the OAPSE.
"What's happening is that we have to give reduction-in-force notice by April 30," Creatore said. "State law doesn't require it, but their contract does."
Creatore said that right now, the district doesn't know exactly how many OAPSE employees it will need because the new middle school on Raccoon Road is requiring a staff realignment. He said the board also needs time to explore recommendations about staffing in a state performance audit of the district.
He said the district had hoped to know exactly how many employees it will need by June.
"They need to know that we have no choice but to RIF everyone," he said. "We're under the gun because [the union] voted 'no.'"
Creatore said the OAPSE vote was Saturday.
Union president Bonnie Grantz would not comment.
Creatore said the school board will also explore an idea that would result in a savings in the district's food service program.
He said the board will consider having all meals cooked at Fitch High School and at the new school.
"It's successful in other school districts," he said. "It reduces expenses and improves quality."
Each of the district's eight schools now has its own kitchen.