Easton School Board Cuts 17 More Teachers

The continued shedding school employees, eliminating the jobs of 17 middle school teachers and its assistant principal following a lengthy executive session Tuesday night.

After an executive session that lasted two hours and 30 minutes, the board took swift action that took just a few minutes in slashing positions.

The cuts came on top of the the board voted on recently who would not be returning for the 2012/2013 school year.

"We said we would continue getting ready for the budget," Board President Robert Fehnel said. "We had a $6 million shortfall looking us in the face."

Fehnel addressed the 20 people in the audience who waited through the executive session for a meeting which was supposed to start at 8 p.m.

"Obviously, we're here to discuss personnel," he said. "We had a lot to discuss."

While the meeting was just expected to discuss the furloughs of 41 para-professional personnel, the board instead first voted to cut the 18 positions at the middle school.

They are:

• Two science teachers.
• Two Social Studies teachers.
• Four math teachers.
• Four reading/English teachers.
• On art teacher.
• One computer education teacher.
• Two health/physical education teachers.
• One writing teacher.
• One assistant principal.

The board did not identify the names of the people losing their jobs.

The cuts came without comment from board members and the public also did not speak.

It was unclear whether some of the furlough positions at Easton Area Middle School were separate from the cuts. But there were 12 positions on that list.

The other furloughs included five at Easton Area High School, five from transportation, five from , four from and one each from Shawnee, , Tracy and Palmer schools.

The board also voted to eliminate the positions of printing services manager and benefits coordinator for the district.

In the first wave of cuts, the teachers either had their contracts suspended or simply not renewed, part of a larger move to cut more than 100 jobs .