Plano ISD Lays Off 344 Employees

Tuesday night's Plano ISD Board meeting resulted in these cuts, by the numbers:

• 5% of staff
• 344 total employees
• 233 teachers
• 101 elementary teachers
• support services - libraries, counseling and multilingual programs
• $26 million in total cuts
• $12 million in cuts of teachers
• $3.5 million in facility services (custodians)
• $3 million in after school programs and tutorials
• 6% of operating budget cut

Plano ISD has 70 schools, nearly 27,000 students and 6800 employees.

From Richard Matkin, associate superintendent for business services:

"We didn't understand the State's position that you can do cuts outside of the classroom. "It's the only place to go when you're looking at the kind of cuts the state is going to implement."

This would be in response to Governor Perry's commentary:

"The nonteaching core would be the first place I would look if there are going to be reductions." 

The first place I would look is for Governor Perry to accept the reality of what is going on with massive teacher and support staff layoffs all across the state.