{"id":33121,"date":"2018-02-18T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-18T16:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/kent-school-district-eliminates-45-positions\/"},"modified":"2018-02-18T09:09:10","modified_gmt":"2018-02-18T17:09:10","slug":"kent-school-district-eliminates-45-positions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/kent-school-district-eliminates-45-positions\/","title":{"rendered":"Kent School District eliminates 45 positions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Staff reports<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Kent School District has laid off 45 central administration center positions for the 2018-19 school year as it continues to close a budget gap.<\/p>\n<p>The eliminations, which followed school district board of directors approval on Wednesday, encompass a range of roles and responsibilities in the central administration center, including 12 leadership positions. The reduction and reorganization represent a net savings of approximately $4 million, the school district said in a news release Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Those people laid off were notified Thursday and Friday.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the reductions in force, compensation at the central administration center will be impacted beginning in the 2018-19 school year. Non-represented administrators will not receive a cost-of-living increase and non-represented non-administrators will not move up a step on the salary schedule for a second year in a row, the school district said.<\/p>\n<p>Also, all non-represented central administration employees will see a reduction of benefits in the 2018-19 fiscal year.<\/p>\n<p>Entering the 2017-18 school year as part of the KSD budget recovery plan, the district made $8 million worth of planned budget reductions and budgeting efficiencies, and through attrition were able to reduce nearly 90 full-time positions. With these efforts, KSD is projected to end August 2018, with a positive fund balance, Superintendent Calvin Watts said.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The reduction in our workforce is not an issue of personnel performance,&rdquo; Watts said. &ldquo;These changes were carefully considered over an extended period and took into account our responsibility to be good fiscal stewards of voter-approved dollars while ensuring that we are on course with our strategic plan and shared vision of higher standards for our students and ourselves.&rdquo;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Layoffs part of the district&rsquo;s plan to close budget deficit <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":33122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-33121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33121"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=33121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}