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Ripon may lay off 28 classified workers
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RIPON – On top of losing five teachers for the next school year due to retirement, Ripon Unified might also end up laying off 28 employees and reducing the hours of 44 others.

When they meet tonight at the Ripon High School multipurpose room, the Board of Education will consider both a resolution that will address the reduction of classified personnel and a classroom realignment plan that will make it possible to continue next school without five teachers that have already filed their paperwork for retirement.

First up on the list will be the issue of addressing the budget reduction plan for the 2009-10 school year by realigning classrooms in grades 4-7 because of attrition. It wil kick the district’s revised transfer policy into effect that will first call for volunteers before resulting in the previously set plan of transferring the students based on their enrollment date in the district.

Four plans are being proposed by district administrators. They include a variety of scenarios that range from not adding a fourth grade class to Park View Elementary and eliminating one classroom at each of the other schools to moving the seventh and eighth grade Special Day Classes to Colony Oak Elementary.

According to a preliminary report prepared by Superintendent Louise Nan, the district is currently leaning against moving the district’s SDC classes as well as a plan that would set up the district for future growth by preparing for the possibility that Ripon High School would end up encroaching on the neighboring Ripon Elementary.

The resolution that the board will be considering would also significantly change the district’s landscape for the next school year by eliminating 20 classroom aides that have not received specialized autistic training, three part time bus drivers, a bilingual aide, a full-time groundskeeper, a half-day physical education aide, a campus supervisor, and two six-hour physical education aides.

If approved the resolution would cut the hours of 23 special education aides by 20 percent (not including the review of individual education plans), 14 secretaries from eight hours daily to six hours daily, one 5.5 hour librarian reduced to only four hours daily and would also halve the full-time schedules of five librarians and one six hour attendance liaison.