Despite Pink Slips, No Pacifica Teachers Laid Off

18 first-year high school teachers who received in March will be able to keep their jobs. 

At , where 13 teachers considered “temporary,” meaning they have one-year or, in some cases, semester-long contracts, received notification of a possible layoff, three teachers voluntarily left to pursue other interests and one transferred to another school. That, paired with manipulating the course catalog to find spots for existing teachers, made it so there was no need for layoffs, Principal Thomas Minshew said yesterday.

Minshew worried in March that some temporary staff would need to be cut because of the likelihood that the number of students attending Terra Nova would decrease. As Minshew explained, one teacher's salary in state funding is equivalent to about 30 students attending a school.

The student body will indeed be smaller in the 2011-12 school year, dropping from about 1,230 to 1,210 students enrolled, with another decrease anticipated in the first weeks of school. That drop, however, does not warrant additional layoffs when voluntary departures are factored in.

At , where five temporary teachers were issued pink slips in March, similar modifications to the course catalog nullified the need for layoffs. 

Principal Caro Pemberton has yet to return calls regarding whether any staff has voluntarily left or if student enrollment has dropped.