THE JOURNAL & TOPICS NEWSPAPERS | FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 2008
11 Dist. 62 Teachers Will No Longer Be With Schools
By TROY BRUZEWSKI
Journal Reporter
Eleven teachers were notified they will not return for the 2008-09 school year at Monday night's Des Plaines Elementary School Dist. 62 meeting.
These are not necessarily layoffs due to job performance, rather are required layoffs to comply with Illinois school code.
Superintendent Jane Westerhold says teachers brought in after the school year begins often are laid off at the conclusion of the school year as to not have a surplus of teachers for the next year.
"We have to do this based on staffing plans and following policy," she said. "We have strict time frames for such things. There are a lot of teachers coming back from leave and we don't want to have more teachers than we need."
However, she added that some of these teachers could be brought back next year, based on needs at the time.
"I'm not saying that at some point they won't be brought back," she said. "Usually by May we have a pretty good handle on our staffing needs and many times we will bring back teachers that have been released by May. It doesn't always happen, but it's a possibility."
These are the teachers, whose contracts are up June 6 and will not return next year:
Britt Anderson Ganan - Grade 2/3 teacher at Iroquois Community School; Laura Biank - ELL Resource teacher at South Elementary; Sara Christiansen Knigge - Grade 1 bilingual teacher at Plainfield Elementary; Jayne Hutchins - Grade 4 bilingual teacher at Orchard Place Elementary; Kristina Krueger - Regular/Special Education teacher at Orchard Place Elementary; Barbara McDonald - Special needs kindergarten teacher at Cumberland Elementary; Lillian Leddy - Language arts/literacy teacher at Algonquin Middle School; Deborah Sjoberg Carlson - Grade 3 teacher at Plainfield Elementary; Thomas Udzielak - Grade 6 math teacher at Algonquin Middle School; Julie Wiatrowski - ELS teacher at Cumberland Elementary; Gina Stolton - Special education teacher at South Elementary; Angela Munroe - General music teacher at Chippewa Middle School.