San Diego Unified officials said an estimated 240 certificated and classified employees are expected to be laid off later this spring after the school board approved cutting the equivalent of more than 480 jobs Tuesday to shrink the district’s financial shortfall.
But district leaders said they will try to reduce the number of potential layoffs in the next several weeks.
The job cuts will save the district about $50 million, said Drew Rowlands, the district’s deputy superintendent of operations. Those savings will cut in half the $94 million unrestricted budget gap that officials say they need to close for next school year.
San Diego Unified employs more than 12,000 people, and employee costs make up more than 90 percent of its unrestricted budget.
The positions being cut include elementary teachers, special education staff, reading teachers, bus drivers, food service workers, noon duty assistants, administrative assistants, instructional coordinators, central office administrators, clerks, custodians, maintenance workers, family services assistants and more.
Some of the positions being eliminated are already vacant. Meanwhile, some employees whose positions are being cut will be reassigned to other jobs in the district, with priority going to employees with seniority.
That number doesn’t include hundreds more people who officials already know will be leaving via other means, such as resignations or retirements, or employees on temporary contracts who will not be renewed by the district, said Kristine Morshead, senior executive director of human resources.
District officials said they expect some additional staff members will decide to leave the district before the end of the school year, helping to reduce the number of eventual layoffs.
In the meantime, the district will notify employees in impacted positions starting March 8 through March 13, and it will send notices of potential layoffs on March 12, Morshead said.
Layoffs and reassignments will be finalized by May 15.
The district’s budget gap is fueled by a combination of factors, officials say, including the fact that the governor’s budget proposal would not significantly increase public school funding this year. Also, one-time COVID-19 relief funds are expiring this fall, and enrollment continues to decline.
Some also blamed the budget gap on the school board’s decision last year to grant 15 percent pay raises to employees, which county officials had at the time said would significantly increase the district’s deficit spending.
“The layoffs we see now are the direct result of a choice the board made,” said Todd Maddison, research director for Transparent California, at Tuesday’s meeting.
District officials have said they are deploying other strategies besides cutting jobs to solve the $94 million gap, including using reserves, canceling plans for future spending and covering some unrestricted expenditures with restricted funding sources.
Even after factoring in the position cuts, the district is projecting it will spend $50 million more than it will receive in revenue this current school year within its unrestricted budget, according to the district’s budget report approved Tuesday.
The district has also predicted an even larger $164 million unrestricted shortfall for the following school year, in 2025-2026. Several board members and district leaders said Tuesday they are confident they will balance the budget in that year, though it may likely require additional difficult budget decisions.
Several leaders and members of district employee unions spoke against the position cuts and layoffs at Tuesday’s meeting, saying many of their members are already overworked and staffing reductions will make it worse. The news is disruptive and distressing to staff, they said.
“Just because the positions are gone doesn’t mean the work is gone,” said Megan Glynn, first vice president of the district’s bargaining unit for office, technical and business services employees, during public comment. “Who’s going to do the work?”
Many parents and a student from Barnard Elementary, a Mandarin dual-language immersion school, also spoke to protest the potential loss of their Mandarin resource teacher.
Superintendent Lamont Jackson and school board members acknowledged the distress that the staffing cuts are causing and expressed sympathy for employees.
“These are not just numbers. These are colleagues, these are people who are doing tremendous work in our schools,” Jackson said. “Our desire is to impact the fewest number of people.”
