- April 18, 2024
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Nonreappointment employment letters were sent out Wednesday, March 3, to first-year Flagler County teachers. But according to School Board Chairwoman Sue Dickinson, the letter is routine.
“In essence, every year this is exactly what happens to first-year teachers,” she said.
With no way of predicting the number of students that will return to school after summer vacation, reappointment letters are distributed to grant the board contractual leeway to cut any unneeded staff from the budget. After yearly retirements and resignations, though, that’s usually not the case, Dickinson said.
But the school still has a $3 million deficit to think about. If the School Board cuts school days from seven hours to six, rearranging teachers’ planning periods to coincide at the end of the day, $1.3 million dollars could be saved.
“That’s huge,” Dickinson said, especially because, aside from scheduling, it wouldn’t affect students. But it would mean removing 26 teachers from the county payroll.
In short, should those teachers who received nonreappointment letters be worried?
“No,” Dickinson said, “unless they haven’t been doing their job or have been ineffective in the classroom …
This is just to cover ourselves via the union … If we don’t give them notice, then we have to bring them back.”
Still in the preliminary stages, no vote to cut school hours has yet been scheduled.
