School group LVO moves "considerably fewer" teachers
The Limburgs Secondary Education (LVO) school foundation will move fewer employees to schools outside Maastricht next school year than previously announced. The Executive Board is going to use extra money to ensure that the staff reduction takes place in phases, an LVO spokesperson said.
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The spokesperson cannot say exactly how many employees are involved. However, that it concerns "considerably fewer employees" than previously known.
Just before the May holiday, 125 employees at LVO were told that they were have to move to another school location outside Maastricht. According to LVO, the measure was necessary to accommodate the shrinkage of pupils and because pupils from the region choose schools in Belgium. The employees were according to the last in, first out principle designated. This means that the teachers and support staff who joined last will be the first to start at another LVO school next school year.
Protest
Porta Mosana secondary school involved 45 teachers who had to work outside Maastricht. Both parents and students opposed this in resistance with, among other things, a petition and they sought media attention. In other schools where a relatively large number of young teachers work with shorter employment contracts, such as the Terra Nigra and Bonnefanten College, many teachers would also have to leave. The fact that it sometimes works out so badly for schools is because the LVO schools in Maastricht are seen as one cluster - one large school.
The school group is now partly returning to the earlier decision. 'We have to reduce the number of employees, but we also want to shift as little as possible with teachers,' says the spokesperson for LVO. 'If we look at those who are currently designated, this leads to undesirable effects.'
Less rigorous
The school board therefore takes a less rigorous approach to the relocations. More teachers will continue to work at their own schools and, according to the spokesperson, the impact will be less in Maastricht. With this, the school wants to 'buy time' to see, together with the unions and participation councils, how they can solve the problem of pupil shrinkage. It is certain that the financial situation must also become healthy for the schools in Maastricht. In daily newspaper the Limburger said board member Guido Beckers: 'We have to look at how we can cut costs without the schools that perform well being the victims.'
AObsector manager Herman Molleman was at LVO today for a consultation. "It gets very complicated and opaque this way," he says. “The question is still how you will distribute the pain. I don't see another solution for it so quickly last in, first outsystem. We point out to our members that they should especially contact our legal department for questions."
