The Roanoke Times | File February

The school board has voted to close Raleigh Court Elementary School (above) and Ruffner Middle School next year, a move that will save slightly more than $3 million.

Among school officials, it was almost a mantra: Roanoke was committed to recruiting and retaining the best teachers.

That was essential in a district that had suffered an exodus of hundreds of teachers over the years. And there were some recent signs of success, partly because of a new superintendent, a turbocharged recruiting schedule and a 5 percent pay increase approved last year. Roughly 185 new teachers went to work in Roanoke schools this year, out of a total teaching force of roughly 1,200; 195 started last year.

Now those highly touted new hires are fearing for their jobs. And school officials have little reassurance for them.

The budget crisis that has gripped Roanoke schools has forced the school board to consider layoffs. Under the district's policy, officials will first look at a teacher's credentials, then at a teacher's seniority in determining who is laid off first. That means that first-year teachers are especially vulnerable, said Superintendent Rita Bishop.

"I'm as concerned as they are," she said. "We will do everything we can to save our staff."

A month ago, officials warned that about 100 teachers could be laid off, roughly 8 percent of the teaching force. That figure has since increased and Bishop would not say how many jobs are endangered, except to say the number was "well under 200," including administrative positions.

School officials are still trying to count how many teachers will leave through retirements or for other reasons before determining how many teachers will need to be laid off. A recent early retirement offer attracted more than 70 takers.

Already, the school board has voted to close Raleigh Court Elementary School and Ruffner Middle School next year, a move that will save slightly more than $3 million. Teachers at those schools are not in any more danger of losing their jobs than teachers elsewhere, according to school officials. Many of those employees will be reassigned.

Bishop said she had finished looking at elementary school staffing levels for next year and would start looking at middle and high school staffing soon. She declined to give further details. The reduction in staff will mean higher average class sizes, although it's still unclear how high the student-teacher average will go. Laid-off teachers could be recalled if the situation improves, Bishop said.

The school board is scheduled to vote on the layoffs on April 7.

"We've done an incredible job of attracting talent in the past year," said Raleigh Court parent Teresa Kelly. "I've seen it at the elementary and at the middle school level.

"We've recruited them but now we are only retaining the ones that meet tenure," she added. "That's not the best thing for our students, especially given the city graduation rate. Why are we retaining teachers solely based on tenure?"

Catherine Weaver, another Raleigh Court parent, also said she was worried that teachers would be retained based on seniority with no regard to their effectiveness in the classroom.

"I think that tenure alone is not really a good measure of our quality teachers," she said. "My concern is retaining the teachers that are going to do the best job and not necessarily the ones that have just been around forever."

Parents mentioned a music teacher at Woodrow Wilson Middle School and a teacher for the gifted program at Raleigh Court as two well-regarded teachers whose jobs may be in jeopardy because of their tenure. Teachers contacted for this story either declined to comment or didn't respond.

Kelly Miller, co-president of the Roanoke Education Association, said she had heard from anxious early-career teachers.

"They're nervous because there's no place for them to go. Nobody's hiring," she said.

Miller also said she appreciated parents' support for quality teachers but added there was little people could do to save jobs.

Administrators "do not want to lose those first-year teachers because they invested so much into them but according to the RIF [reduction in force] policy and according to any fair and equitable way to lay people off, the people with the less seniority are the ones who are going to go," she said.

Bishop said she hoped to be able to use money from the federal stimulus plan to save some jobs. Roanoke will receive about $4.4 million from the plan, although officials are still waiting to see whether the federal government will place restrictions on how the money is spent. Bishop vowed that she would use as much of that money as possible to keep teachers employed.

"I have a plan that could definitely help us," she said. "We're checking some things."