The Kenosha Unified School District expects to announce July 10 how many teacher layoffs there will be for the coming school year.

Although there are about 150 open positions throughout the district, there has been a hiring freeze since last month while district officials grapple with a budget deficit of about $9.2 million.

Kenosha Unified thought it had a balanced budget in January when it expected an increase of $5.8 million in state aid. Instead, Gov. Jim Doyle cut state aid by 2.5 percent, which accounts for an additional $3.4 million.

Sheronda Glass, human resources director, hoped to get 50 teachers to take up an offer of a voluntary layoff, which would have saved about $3.2 million.

Only seven teachers took the offer, which will bring about a $525,000 savings.

Joe Kiriaki, the Kenosha Education Association director, has said as many as 200 teachers would accept early retirement if the district offered buyouts, and Glass said all options are being considered.

“Absolutely,” she said. “Anything and everything is on the table and we will consider anything. It depends on what it looks like and how much it will ultimately cost.”

The teachers are currently in negotiation with the district for a new contract, but both sides have yet to discuss salary and compensation.

Glass earlier said she would prefer to manage the shortfall by not hiring some of the open teaching positions, but that could lead to increased class sizes. She said the 42 special education classes would not be affected in the hiring freeze.

“Nobody wants to raise class sizes and the administration will give us a lot of options to choose from,” said Pam Stevens, School Board president. “We will do what we have to do, and hope and pray it doesn’t lead to that.

“We’re not going to touch special education,” she added. “And as far as the hiring freeze, there are certain other positions that I don’t think we can freeze that we need for the district to run.”

The school district is going forward with its search for a superintendent to replace Joe Mangi, who wants to retire by mid-January.

Glass said contract requests will be sent to various search firms later today, and they will have until the end of July to send in proposals.

“We want to get the ball rolling on that right away,” Stevens said. “We will go through the list of bids, and may interview a couple of the firms. We don’t want to just base our decision on the pamphlets they send us.”