Teachers angry over firing notices

In a spring rite that has become as predictable as cherry blossoms in the nation's capital, public school employees throughout California warned of wrenching classroom cuts Friday as local officials faced a deadline for issuing layoff notices to educators.AP in the Daily News.

The state Department of Education estimates that preliminary pink slips will have been handed to 26,500 teachers by the Sunday cutoff - 22 times as many as were issued last year. An additionalother 15,000 bus drivers, janitors, secretaries and administrators also were expected to receive the written warnings, said Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell.

Because of the state's less-than-rosy economic outlook, California's 1,000 school districts in kindergarten through 12 th grade have been instructed to absorb more than $8 billion in funding cuts over the next year. To draw attention to the situation, teachers and parents wore pink clothes and waved pink protest signs for a day that California's largest teachers' union dubbed Pink Friday.

"It's kind of depressing for your overall moral