GOSHEN -- Twenty Goshen Community Schools employees have applied for early retirement incentives offered by the corporation to make up for a $1.8 million budget shortfall -- the minimum number of employees needed to proceed with the plan.
The GCS Board approved at its March 8 meeting a memorandum of understanding that would offer early retirement incentives as long as at least 20 employees applied. Superintendent Bruce Stahly said at Monday's meeting that the district received its 20th application Thursday.
Stahly told the board in February that the district would notify first- and second-year teachers that reductions in force are possible, but a large number of retirements could keep the district from having to actually lay anyone off.
"If we can maintain, or at least deal with, the staffing and have some reductions without doing a (reduction in force) and getting enough people to retire, leave, then I think it will be more painless than otherwise," Stahly said in February.
The incentives are one way the district is trying to make up for the $1,816,935.54 it lost for 2010 when Gov. Mitch Daniels announced at the end of 2009 that he would cut $300 million of state funding from K-12 education.
Stahly said more people could still apply, but the memorandum approved by the board said the district can't offer the incentives to more than 26 people.