Some highlights, and my first reactions:
* The Governor is proposing to give school districts flexibility to layoff, assign, reassign, transfer and rehire teachers based on a school’s skill and subject matter needs instead of strictly teacher seniority.
The idea here is to allow schools to keep less-senior teachers, rather than letting former teachers who became administrators go back into the classroom.
* Giving school districts 60 days to determine staffing after the budget is adopted or amended.
This is just long overdue.
* Giving power back to local governing boards to ensure high-quality educators are teaching California’s students.
It sounds like the idea here is to give local school boards the last word on terminations.
* Eliminating regulations giving laid off teachers first priority for substitute assignments and that these substitutes be paid at rate received before they were laid off.
This will allow the district to hire whoever it wants as substitutes (provided that they are certificated) and pay them as it chooses, regardless of whether the substitute was previously laid off.
* Providing school schools with continued flexibility to decide, if necessary, to reduce the length of the school year by up to five days to accommodate 2009-10 budget reductions
Source: Web Link
