LAKE ELSINORE -- Members of the Lake Elsinore teachers union voted overwhelmingly to take three unpaid furlough days to save the jobs of co-workers.
The proposed deal between the union and the district received 790 yes votes, which amounts to 86 percent of the 916 ballots cast, union officials said this week.
Eighty-eight percent of Lake Elsinore Teachers Association members voted, they said.
The Lake Elsinore Unified School District board is expected to vote on the agreement Thursday.
The result of the deal will be that the district will retain 214 teachers who received preliminary layoff notices and maintain a ratio of 20 students to each teacher in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.
"This sacrifice truly demonstrates how much teachers care, not only about their peers, but about their students," teachers union President Karl Stuck said Thursday.
Stuck said he was pleased that teachers at the district's middle schools and high schools showed such support for elementary educators, who would have taken the brunt of the layoffs.
"That's what is so amazing to me. It's not just the elementary teachers. It's a mandate across all grade levels," Stuck said. "It was the right thing to do, to help teachers and to help kids."
The school district and the Lake Elsinore chapter of the California School Employees Association, which represents nonteaching personnel, have agreed to a similar proposal for three unpaid days, which would save some positions that were targeted for layoffs.
If approved, the district will rescind 27 of 78 proposed layoffs of classified workers.
The union has until Wednesday to vote on the deal.
Both agreements call for the furlough days to be eliminated if money becomes available.
The district is working to close an anticipated budget shortfall of $7.4 million for next school year, Superintendent Frank Passarella said.
Management and other employees not represented by a union have agreed to take the furlough days, as well.
Passarella said that with all three of the employee groups taking three days off, there would be a savings of $1.9 million.
The Lake Elsinore district had a revenue of $168 million for this year as of Jan. 31, compared with $172 million in 2007-08 and $165 million the previous year.
Spending through January was $173 million, almost matching last year's total.
Expenditures were $162 million in 2006-07.
Teacher furlough days are still to be negotiated, but they would be on staff development days when children are not in class.
Classified workers would take their furloughs on days they would typically work during winter break.
During negotiations, district officials offered to cut the number of potential teacher layoffs from 214 to 26 and ultimately to 14, saying that the number of students projected to enroll in the district next year didn't warrant bringing back all of the teachers.
Now, Passarella said, increased enrollment projections and higher attendance rates, mixed with expected federal stimulus money, will allow the district to keep all of the teachers.
Still, he said, budgeting for next year is in flux until after the May 19 state election and the governor issues his revised budget, which isn't expected until June.
"We feel confident, at this point, that we can balance our budget," Passarella said.
Stuck said the deal helps in the classroom and in the community.
"Laying off all of these teachers would have made a declining local economy only worse," Stuck said. "Teachers believe that saving teachers' jobs not only helps those teachers and the kids the teachers are teaching, but it also helps the local economy."
Contact staff writer Craig Shultz at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2625.
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