OXFORD – Twenty-four instructional staff positions could be cut or reduced to part-time if the Oxford school district’s top administrator has his way. The plan, first proposed to the school board by Superintendent Randy Squier in late February, has both school staff members and the Oxford community up in arms.

“The OTA supports what we call full staffing,” Jonathan Rogers, president of the Oxford Teacher’s Association, told board members last week. “The teachers we have are people to be proud of.”

If approved, Squier’s plan would eliminate nine teaching and three licensed teaching assistant positions. It would also reduce an additional four teaching and five aide positions to part time.

According to Rogers, the teacher’s union was neither consulted about which positions could be affected nor were they present when staff members were informed their jobs could be in jeopardy.

“We were told there would be cuts, but not what or who,” the union leader explained.

Elizabeth Schaefer was one of several teachers who spoke out with concerns about the proposed cuts at last week’s school board meeting.

“There is a great gulf and a great gap between the people who work here and the people we work for,” said Schaefer, who teaches social studies at Oxford High School.

Schaefer called the superintendent’s plan “backwards,” since it calls for cuts in areas which provide the foundation of learning for other content areas. She also expressed concern about how the news was delivered to affected staff members, saying it was done in a “hatchet-man” fashion which had negatively affected morale within the school community.

“The trust issue rises itself once more,” Schaefer said.

While teaching jobs are being cut in all three buildings, Squier’s proposal actually calls for adding two instructional positions in special education and one maintenance position. He also plans to reassign one current administration position to “half-time administrative, half-time instructional.”

This last piece of information caused Kathy Hodge, a special education teacher at Oxford High School, to cry foul. “I’m very confused,” she said. “That’s an addition, not a subtraction.”

“I guess. I didn’t look at it that way,” said Squier.

Hodge said she had other concerns as well, particularly about coverage issues that would arise due to the position cuts. “I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around the schedules,” she said.

According to Hodge, the media center, regular and honor study halls and in-school suspension as areas where supervision would become difficult with the staff reductions proposed by the superintendent.