In a precautionary response to the state budget crisis this week, school districts across California are notifying tens of thousands of teachers and school administrators that they could be laid off next year.
As many as 30,000 teachers and administrators are receiving the so-called March 15 notices this year, according to estimates by education officials and organizations.
The eventual number of layoffs is expected to be much smaller as the state adopts a budget and school districts get a better handle on their finances.
But that probably won't be known until summer, or even after school starts in the fall with what the state projects will be an enrollment increase of about 100,000 students.
Meanwhile, the notices are triggering anxiety among faculty members, who will be in limbo for months, and are unsettling students and their families.
Some teachers who received the notices this week said they are considering leaving the profession.
"I can't wait for the state to get its head together," said Kerry Pellow, a Laguna Beach computer graphics teacher who received a notice along with seven administrators and 42 other district instructors -- out of a teacher work force of 127 there. She is renewing her real estate license and plans to start job hunting in May.
"I have a family to support and a house payment to make," she said. "I have to get the ball rolling as far as covering my bases." School district leaders say the notices -- which under state rules must be postmarked by Saturday -- are necessary for flexibility as they wrestle with more than $5 billion in education cuts proposed by Gov. Gray Davis over the next 18 months.
Wayne Johnson, president of the state teachers union, accused school districts of using the notices as a ploy to force concessions at the collective bargaining table.
But other education experts said the number of notices reflects the dire financial situation facing schools up and down the state. Districts occasionally have resorted to the notices in the past, but officials say this year's volume is the largest they can recall.
"School districts don't issue layoff notices for effect or to convince legislators to do something to their advantage. They don't want to issue these notices," said Ron Bennett, president of School Services of California, a private consulting firm that works with most of the state's more than 1,000 districts.
