By Khalida Sarwari
Students in the San Jose Unified School District are preparing for a break starting Monday due to a weeklong furlough by school employees.
About 3,000 district employees, including 1,800 teachers, agreed to the furlough, district spokeswoman Karen Fuqua said.
That amounts to a nearly 3 percent pay cut for the teachers and about $5 million in savings for the district, which has lost tens of millions of dollars in state funding this year.
All 42 campuses in the district are shutting down for a week, Fuqua said.
The district took a different approach from other districts by lumping all the furlough days into one week, she said.
“We thought this would be a better way, to take off five days and then go on and have larger blocks of instruction time,” Fuqua said.
District Superintendent Vincent Matthews posted a statement on the district’s website saying the furlough “is evidence of the commitment of the district to maintaining fiscal solvency as well as strong collaboration with labor groups.”
High school athletic programs will continue as scheduled next week, but regular programs and classes will be out of session until Oct. 11.