In line with an estimated 1,500 statewide job cuts expected to be announced within the coming weeks, the Madison Metropolitan School District is considering potentially delivering hundreds of preliminary layoff notices Monday.

Ken Syke, MMSD spokesperson, said the district was still unaware of whether the notices would definitely be delivered because of a number of extenuating factors that have yet to be settled.

The district is also unsure of exactly how many notices would be issued, but Syke said the number is expected to be in the hundreds. The district will have a better grasp on numbers when Gov. Scott Walker reveals cuts from state aid in his budget March 1.

“We don’t know exactly how many cuts there would be, and even once we issue the notices, we wouldn’t know for sure,” Syke said. “It’s basically an educated guess.”

Uncertainty also surrounded which specific staff members and what types of employees would be included in the cuts. Syke said the decision would be based off of the different types of licenses teachers had – information that had not yet been compiled.

State law requires districts that do not have a different agreement with the local teachers’ union to issue nonrenewal notices 15 days before March 15, making the deadline Monday, Syke said. He said all districts throughout the state would potentially be forced to make the same kinds of decisions by the deadline.

Individual districts can negotiate the state’s deadline with teachers’ unions, but no agreement has yet been reached between MMSD and local unions.

Syke said the district has been making cuts to the budget and staff numbers almost every year for the past 18 years based on the school funding formula implemented in 1993.

“Anything we end up having to do is an additional cut that is in essence being piled on top of these cuts over the previous 18 years, so we are very concerned,” Syke said.

Walker said earlier this week that 1,500 public job cuts would be required by the end of this fiscal year if his budget repair bill did not pass through both legislative houses by Friday. The bill is currently in limbo as the 14 Senate Democrats left the state last week to stall a vote.

The MMSD school board met in a closed meeting Friday morning to take up a negotiations strategy concerning successor Collective Bargaining Agreements for MMSD Bargaining Units. The board also conferred with legal counsel who provided advice for a strategy to be adopted with respect to litigation in which the board might be likely to become involved, a document from the district said.

Teachers are not considered state employees, Cullen Werwie, Walker’s spokesperson, said in an e-mail to The Badger Herald. He said any layoff notices sent out to MMSD teachers or other employees from around the state came from their respective school boards without any influence from Walker’s administration.

Though they are not state employees, Werwie said the layoffs still could have been avoided through the repair bill.

“If the AWOL Senate Dems came back to work, many teacher layoffs could be avoided by the reforms contained in the budget repair bill,” Werwie said.