Fourteen people spoke their piece before an overflow crowd of more than 100 at the April 13 meeting of the Nogales Unified School District No. 1 governing board.

Students from Pierson Vocational High School rose to defend their school. Others reacted to what they saw as a threat to lay off “retired” teachers.

Their worries began after the April 6 budget session when the board sought ways to cope with a large cut in state funding. Superintendent Shawn McCollough proposed a major shift at Pierson -�“ move the vocational courses to Nogales High School and open up Pierson to students suspended from NHS.

“I want to give these students an opportunity to earn their way back into NHS,” McCollough said. This “restructuring” could save an estimated $342,915.

McCollough had talked about the possibility of cuts in teaching staff, if the Legislature trimmed more from the NUSD budget than he anticipated. But after a 140-minute executive session on Monday, board members voted to approve all employment offers for the 2009-2010 year.

With the exception of contracts not renewed for performance reasons, “everyone was brought back,” McCollough said.

In early March, the board did not renew contracts for 44 teachers and substitutes with emergency certification, said Assistant Superintendent Steve Zimmerman in an interview. The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) will not allow these teachers to return without provisional or full certification. NUSD will try to replace 27 of these teachers at its April 18 hiring fair.

“I’m thinking about coming back (to teaching),” Lois Morris, a retired middle school math teacher, told the board. “I’m getting the feeling I’m not wanted.”

NUSD has 27 or 28 staff, mostly teachers, who collect or have collected pensions while working at 80 percent of their salary, according to Human Resources Director Vickie De Giso.

“They’re your neighbors and your friends,” Morris said. If newcomers from outside the county fill their positions, those new teachers “will be here for a year and then the economy will get better and they’ll move on.”

Until recently, NUSD encouraged teachers to retire and work a year through Educational Services Inc. (ESI), said Neal Krug, a science teacher at NHS and vice-president of Professional Educators of Nogales.

Then the employees can go back on the district payroll at a reduced cost, Krug said. “They are the most loyal, experienced and hard-working teachers.”

Some 21 of those employees have one or two kids in college, said Sharon Urman, a language arts teacher at Desert Shadows Middle School. “We are the mentors who guide inexperienced teachers.”

Isabela Maytorena, a freshman at NHS, said retired teachers should get thank you cards, not dismissal notices. “They are here because this is where they want to be,” she said.

Board member Hector Arana noted that the district let go of 44 teachers. “God forbid if some of our ESI (retired) people don’t come back,” he said.

If the district is going to cut positions, “it has to be fair,” Arana said.

McCollough told the Nogales International the district would offer contracts to all those retired employees and they would not be targeted as a group.

The Pierson students apparently saw a threat to the way their alternative school operates.

Patrick Carrillo thanked his teachers for their hard work. “If you decide to shut down this school, my goal will be harder to reach,” Carrillo said.

Parent Blanca Yanez praised Pierson as an “excellent school with extraordinary teachers,” and asked for a round of applause for Principal Joel Kramer.

“I owe him for my daughter’s success,” Yanez said.

Her daughter Nicole will graduate one year early, first in her class, and has been accepted at Arizona State University in Tempe, Yanez said in an interview.

“This school prepares us for the future,” Nicole Yanez told the board. “Life is about technology.”

She said she worried that more students would drop out of high school and resort to crime if Pierson were not open to them.

William Ciudad said he was “pretty bummed” when he got a letter from NHS sending him to Pierson.

“I showed up with five credits and I was a junior,” Ciudad said. Now he has earned 19 credits and learned not to plagiarize �“ take credit for someone else’s work, he said.

“It’s a great place to learn. You can do everything a lot faster and the teachers are always there to help you,” Ciudad said.

Evelyn Alvarez, who transferred to Pierson from NHS, told the board, “Here I found teachers who understand me.”

Frank Chavez, president of the Education Support Personnel Association, thanked McCollough and Zimmerman for explaining what could happen with the state budget cuts.

“We are the backbone of the Nogales Unified School District,” Chavez said about the classified staff that maintain buildings and grounds and provide clerical support. “We are the lowest paid (by the hour) but we don’t complain.”

In the plan proposed April 6, McCollough said the district could save $187,793 if it trimmed 87 classified employees from 12 months to 11 months a year. It projected a savings of $76,944 if 27 administrative classified staff worked 11 instead of 12 months. Another four employees in the same group could be reduced to 11.5 months to save $2,491, according to the budget document.

The drop to 11 months represents a 7 percent to 8 percent pay cut, Chavez told the audience. “That hurts our livelihood. We are the working poor.”

In the late 1990s, NUSD changed to a year-round schedule, McCollough said in an interview. It returned to a traditional schedule in 2001 and closed buildings during the summer, but kept the staff employed for 12 months.

The proposed budget includes more than $300,000 in cuts to administration, McCollough said. It is a plan for cuts if the Legislature takes 6 percent of NUSD’s funding.

Zimmerman said he does not expect final figures from the Legislature until late May.

On Monday, Board President L. Hunter Nash emphasized, “There will be no action tonight on cuts.”