Given the slip

As tens of thousands of educators across California stare down impending layoffs brought on by the state budget deficit, the five-dozen teachers from the Burbank Unified School District holding pink slips are engaged in battles of their own.

Some of the fight is public: Sixty teachers last week appealed the possible layoff notices before an administrative law judge, and over the last two months have joined groups of boisterous, pink-clad students and parents in protest.

District officials sent notices to teachers and school employees before the March 15 deadline, warning that nearly 129 positions could be purged to endure $13.1 million in funding reductions over the next three years. The district has since whittled the number of possible layoffs to 60.

The Burbank Unified School District Board of Education on Thursday will consider bumping student-to-teacher rations from the current 20-to-1 to 26-to-1 in kindergarten through third grade, Supt. Gregory Bowman said. The boost in class size would require fewer teachers, whose salaries and benefits make up roughly 87% of the district’s budget. School district officials have also recommended to the board a ninth-grade English and math ratio of 26 to 1.

With a decision from the administrative hearing due, the board is also expected to adopt a resolution on the number of final layoff notices, which the district must issue by May 15, said Gabe Soumakian, assistant superintendent of human resources.

For three Burbank teachers — one in her fourth year, one who has had to put career plans on hold and the other a veteran educator who lost her seniority when she joined the district — the May 15 deadline looms as the day in which bottom-line figures converge with the very real possibility of losing their jobs.

‘BORN TO TEACH’  

Melissa Pamperin was just a child when her mother seized on a possible career path.

“She knew I was going to be a teacher because I used to give my two younger brothers homework assignments,” said Pamperin, 33, of Valley Village. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life after graduating [the University of Virginia]. I just kept going back to the idea of teaching.”

Instead she took a job as a personal assistant for actress Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon (“NYPD Blue,” “The Jamie Foxx Show”) until finally deciding to enroll at Cal State Northridge to obtain her teaching credential.