AISD board votes decides cut down jobs

The Austin Independent School District overwhelmingly voted in favor of job reductions as the only solution to deal with budget deficit.

The voting was carried out today morning in which the majority of AISD board members decided to go ahead with the foreseen cutting down of workforce in the district. The decision was taken keeping in view the looming deficit in district preliminary budget 2010-2011.

The AISD is chalking out a new plan which would include doing away with 113 jobs districtwide. Sources say out of the 113, 30 are already unoccupied while 46 are related to high school offices. The remaining 37 belong to the central office. Abolishing the above mentioned positions would contribute $6 million dollars to the district treasury. By not doing anything now the authorities fear that the arrears in budget could grow from $7.1 million to $14.2 million in just one year.

On the other hand the employees of AISD emphasize that cutting down of jobs isn’t the right way to go about the matter. They also feel those who are still in multi-year contracts will have nowhere to go as legally they wouldn’t be able to get a job. And in the worst scenario case if the cuttings are unavoidable, then proper rearrangements should be made for the discharged employees to be reassigned somewhere else. The employees are maintaining a hard stance on the issue of job cuts but have developed a softer stance on cutting down of programs in order to meet the budget restraints.