Speaking at a forum last week at South Kitsap High School, school board President Kathryn Simpson uttered a statement that sounded suspiciously like what supervisors in the private sector tell their employees every day.

“I’m sorry your workload’s going to get higher,” she told a concerned teacher, “and everyone’s workload is going to get raised. But right now, we need to hunker down and do the best we can for our kids.”

Only on second thought, that speech in the private sector doesn’t typically start with, “I’m sorry.”

No one was overjoyed by the news a week earlier that the district planned to eliminate the equivalent of 15 teaching positions for next year in order to help close a $6.5 million budget gap.

No one in the real world much likes layoffs, either. But hard times demand hard choices.

Ultimately, because of attrition. relatively few teachers will actually be given pink slips. It’s just that those left standing, as Simpson notes, will have to work harder to fill the void.

Again, welcome to our world. Virtually everyone still employed these days has been forced to assume some of the duties of a departed co-worker, and in more cases than we’d probably like to admit, the changes have imposed needed efficiencies on our workplaces that wouldn’t have been tried otherwise.

None of which is meant to suggest the layoffs are a good thing. It just doesn’t have to be the catastrophe some are predicting.

To wit, one teacher attending the forum lamented that the layoffs would add an one extra student per class — a total of five per day — to his current total.

“It breaks my heart to think there’s going to be a little less of me to go around,” he said.

Even if we were prepared to admit having one or two more seats filled in a classroom would impact a teacher’s workload in any meaningful way, there’s still a pretty good answer to that concern: Work harder and be thankful you still have a job.

Like the rest of us.