Five IPS principals and 29 other administrators received layoff notices Tuesday night in the urban district’s latest cost-cutting effort.

The principals were Linda Davis of Broad Ripple Magnet High School, Teresa James of Key Learning Community, Michael Sullivan of Marshall Community High School, Joyce Buntin of School 61 and Melissa Richards of School 60.

Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Eugene White said there will be more central office departures through retirement. The district has offered an early-retirement incentive for up to 50 administrators, 150 teachers and 50 support staff.

“It’s not over,” White said of the job reductions. “Don’t rush to judgment. The process will balance it out.”

These cuts were part of the first step in White’s reorganization plan, designed to save $40 million.

The full plan, which he has promised to deliver this spring, also is supposed to shrink and refine the central office and is being crafted in response to the state takeover of four IPS schools coming this fall.

That move will redirect millions in state aid from the district to a private company and a nonprofit group the state hired to run those schools.

White emphasized that he was planning a reorganization after The Mind Trust, an Indianapolis nonprofit focused on education reform, released a report in December calling for a complete overhaul of the district, putting the mayor in charge of schools, cutting the central office deeply and redirecting administrative spending to more autonomous schools.

Most of the other administrators receiving layoff notices Tuesday were high school and middle school assistant principals and deans. Only five are district-level administrators and only one (Transportation Department Director of Operations Robert Huggins) is in a major supervisory role.

Board members Annie Roof and Diane Arnold voted “no” on White’s proposed personnel moves, but their concerns related to the creation of a new administrative job at Tech High School, not the layoff list.

White said he was legally required to give notice now if he wants to lay off administrators in May.

Most of the people on the list, he said, would be laid off for poor performance, but in some cases they could still be kept on.

“We can always take people off the list, but we can never add,” White said. “Some of them are on the bubble. Some are a done deal.”

Article source: http://www.indystar.com/article/20120125/LOCAL/201250350

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