Hundreds of teachers who were in danger of losing their jobs this summer may have been given a reprieve.
About 600 Jersey City schools employees were expected to be laid off as part of a budget crisis. But Mayor Steve Fulop says that he is working with the Board of Education to save the jobs.
Fulop says that the city will be giving more money from the city budget toward the school system. He says that the 1% payroll tax from non-Jersey City residents and large corporations who do business in the city will add about $27 million of much-needed revenue to the school district’s budget.
But Fulop says that there will still be some layoffs.
“It’s going to be a very, very small subset of the initial layoff notices that were sent out. I think a healthy institution gets ride of positions that are redundant, regardless of budgetary circumstances. If a position is redundant or not being utilized the way it should be utilized, I think the taxpayers in Jersey City would expect us to do that regardless of the circumstances,” the mayor says.
Parents marched to City Hall earlier this week to protest the budget cuts. School officials say that a cut in state funding caused the budget gap.
Fulop says that his ultimate goal is to make sure that there will not be any impact on the classroom student-to-teacher ratio.