L.A. school district may lay off thousands

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles school board voted yesterday to send notices of impending layoffs to more than 8,800 teachers and other employees.

The district, with 688,000 students, faces a $718 million budget shortfall. It has 36,000 teachers and 12,000 professional workers.

Chanting teachers and some parents of students in the Los Angeles Unified School District - the nation's second-largest district - forced the board to move its meeting to a cafeteria.

"We got our message across. We made the best of it. We'll move on from here," said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, when the protesters emerged from the board room more than two hours later.

The notices will go out by Sunday, and the number to be laid off will be determined no later than June 30.

The state Department of Education has not projected the number of teachers who could be laid off statewide. But the California Teachers Association said more than 20,000 pink slips had already been issued to teachers ahead of Sunday's deadline.

Los Angeles School Superintendent Ramon Cortines said factors that would determine the number of layoffs in the district would include declining enrollment, the effectiveness of an early-retirement incentive package being developed, and the money the district may receive from the federal economic stimulus.