HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY — As the Hillsborough County School District works to fix its finances, Friday is the final deadline for the district to notify teachers if they’re going into “a pool,” meaning their position could be gone next year.
“Being able to protect our teachers, our support staff are in potentially, our leaders, by putting them in pools, it helps us to be able to, you know, potentially save them within our organization,” said Addison Davis, Superintendent of Hillsborough County Schools.
If a teacher is put into “a pool” it means they may have to leave their current school and be transferred to another one, or a different subject.
The district has plans to cut more than 1,000 positions, including both administrative and instructional jobs.
“It's unattractive, undesirable. It's a superintendent’s you know worst nightmare that you have to do it,” said Davis.
Leaders are in the process of notifying employees if their position has been eliminated.
Those people may be able to apply for other positions within the district.
“It's hard to do when you have a pandemic, this parallel at the same time, you're fighting and find yourself over $100 million in deficit, that you're backed in a corner,” said Davis.
The district is also implementing a hiring freeze in an effort to make more budget cuts.
“So we're looking at while we're cutting positions, trying to do everything we can to say the individuals that continue to give their heart their efforts and their energies to our students every day,” said Davis.
Davis is still considering closing some under-enrolled schools while the board continues to look into selling its main administrative building in downtown Tampa, worth more than $20 million.
“We’re just trying to work our way out of it. It's the largest deficit that any superintendent in the state of Florida has ever had to address,” said Davis.
