Over 70 East Orange school employees learn they will be laid off on Dec. 15
School officials said the reason for the layoffs is that the district has run out of money.
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Emotions were high on Wednesday as some employees of the East Orange Public School District found out they were out of a job.
East Orange Public School principals, teachers and staffers rallied outside of the Board of Education building ahead of Wednesday night’s budget meeting in hopes of saving their jobs.
Zania Saul is a math coach at an elementary school who won't be losing a job. Instead, she'll be transferred to another school.
"Some of these people were hired in August. They started Sept. 1 and a month later you’re telling them that now you’re going to be unemployed in 60 days, I just don’t understand,” says Saul.
As early as last week Thursday, employees of the district received Rice Notices which public agencies must give out before talks about job changes. On Wednesday night, East Orange Public School employees heard directly from Superintendent Dr. Christopher Irving, who said plainly that the district has no money.
"We have no savings. As our state and federal funding had moved down, we’ve had the opportunity to not have any more savings,” Irving said.
According to the superintendent’s presentation, the district only received $200,000 in additional state aid. Some of the district's biggest budget challenges are out-of-district tuition, food service and transportation, with the biggest challenge being salaries.
"We face the risk of not making payroll at the end of the year,” the superintendent said.
Thelma Ramsey Bryant is an East Orange school principal and the president of the Administrator’s Association. She says she's concerned about how this will affect the students.
"This is the worst time of year to do something like this because it impacts our children deeply. It impacts all of our buildings and we kind of didn’t see this coming,” said Bryant.
East Orange employees rallying ahead of the meeting say they currently don’t have contracts and the district says these cuts and an accumulation of $7 million to $10 million would help get those contracts settled.
Over 70 employees learned their fate that they would be without a job effective on Dec. 15.
