St. Paul school board members on Tuesday voted unanimously to delay making a decision on whether to cut more than 18 full-time equivalent English as a second language teaching positions.

The district had proposed the cuts after October enrollment data showed the district had more than 540 fewer English language learner students attending classes this year than anticipated. According to district leaders, the shortfall would mean nearly $5 million less in state funding under Minnesota’s per-pupil funding formula.

“Operation Metro Surge, changes in immigration and fewer new families settling in our community are among the circumstances reflected in our enrollment,” Superintendent Stacie Stanley wrote in a letter to families last week.

“Behind every enrollment number is a student, a family, a teacher and a school community. We deeply miss the students and families who are no longer in our classrooms. Their absence is felt in our schools and throughout our community,” Stanley added.

The loss in funding from lower student enrollment has the potential to affect the district’s required 5 percent fund balance. If the minimum fund balance is not maintained, the district could harm its bond rating, which would impact its ability to borrow funds.

Cutting teachers would have affected the majority of schools in the state’s second-largest district and changes would have occurred as soon as the beginning of the second quarter.

“If somebody had told me a year ago that we would be sitting here going through this conversation, I couldn’t have imagined it,” Stanley told attendees at Tuesday’s board meeting. “I couldn’t have imagined individuals hired by the government would come in and take away 11,000 Minnesotans. I couldn’t have imagined talking to our educators and listening to the trauma they were going through and the trauma that our kids and our families are going through.”

Union and community members held a rally before the board meeting and stayed to voice public comments on the board’s proposal during the meeting. The meeting, which lasted several hours, was filled with cheering, boos and shouted comments.

Carrie Kyung, president of the St. Paul Federation of Educators, said the board proposing midyear layoffs was unprecedented.

“We want it to impact the fewest amount of students as possible…we are taking away midyear that structure and support for them,” Kyung told MPR News in an interview.

By the end of the meeting, board members brought forward a proposal to delay voting on the layoffs until the week of Oct. 26. The motion included a requirement that district leaders “investigate at least one option that mitigates or avoids midyear cuts.”

Kyung applauded the decision.

“People… were very angry simply because of not being heard or not feeling as though their dignity was being honored by being filled in on what was going on as it was going on. So this at least allows us a little bit of that time to feel like we’re a part of the process,” Kyung said.

She said she planned to meet with Superintendent Stanley as soon as Wednesday to discuss proposals. She added that union members had started gathering data to come up with alternatives to layoffs to present to the district.

Board members said they were upset about being put in a position to have to make layoff decisions.

“We would not be in this position if it wasn’t for this fascist regime coming after us, terrorizing our community, stealing our neighbors from us,” board member Uriah Ward said. “You all feel angry because you want what’s best for our kids. And we feel angry up here too… even though we know that a hard choice still needs to be made. There’s a lot of fighting that still needs to happen. We need to do everything we can. We need to be fighting against the regime that is targeting our kids. And we gotta fight our legislature to do better.”

Collected from Minnesota Public Radio News. View original source here.