UPDATE (8/18/09): Orange County Schools will continue to employ its six retired educators in the fall, according to assistant superintendent for human resources Greg Hicks, at the Orange board meeting last night. If the legislation to allow them to double-dip expires Oct. 1, two of the teachers will finish the semester out as full-time temps and then go back into retirement. The other four, however, said they plan to come out of retirement to continue teaching in the spring semester.
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Original post on Chapel Hill-Carrboro written 8/10/09:
Just got off the phone with Chapel Hill-Carrboro superintendent Neil Pedersen who told me the school district's four retired-but-rehired teachers won't be coming back next year.
You may remember hearing about teachers like Charles Stewart from a story written by Alicia Banks a few weeks ago. Stewart was one of 2,067 retired educators in the state who benefited from special legislation that allowed retired educators to work full time under one-year contracts while also receiving retirement pay.
The original purpose of the law was to allow districts to fill critical vacancies with experienced teachers in the short-term. Because of a long budget process, the status of teachers like Stewart was unknown for most of the summer. Now, the district says they will be unable to extend contracts to the four retired educators who were working last year.
There is some good news, though. Pedersen also told me that most of the nearly 100 teachers and 40 teaching assistants who were put "on notice" about their jobs in June will be able to return to their positions in the fall.
"We were successful in anticipating the magnitude of the reductions," Pedersen said. "For the most part, we were on target."
