WATSONVILLE—The Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees on Wednesday approved a proposal to lay off as many as 24 classified employees, a move district officials say was necessary due to declining enrollment.
Superintendent Michelle Rodriguez told the board that the district has lost about 350 students this year–about half of them to the new charter school Watsonville Prep–resulting in a loss of $4 million.
The budget will also likely receive no cost of living adjustment, a decline from the 2.3 percent increase it was expecting. Worse, federal stimulus money designed to bolster the general fund will fall short by about $400,000, Rodriguez said.
PVUSD Human Resources Director Chona Killeen said the cuts were to “positions, not employees,” and that most will be shifted to vacant positions.
The 34 positions cut include 17 instructional aides, a pool maintenance technician and two behavior technicians.
The actual number of layoffs will range from 22 to 24, Rodriguez said. About 15 will transfer to other positions.
By law, classified employees must receive 60 days notice for any layoffs.
Killeen called the move “right-sizing,” a term industry leaders use to describe meeting budget goals through workforce reduction and cost-cutting.
Numerous people emailed comments to the board during the video-conferenced meeting, all of them in opposition of the proposal. Many demanded the district focus its layoffs on upper management.
Rodriguez told the board that the layoffs were decided upon during budget talks before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered schools statewide and sent them spiraling into further financial uncertainty.
Those talks planned for the loss of an estimated 1,000 students over the next two years, Rodriguez said.
She said that the need to make cuts would get worse if the trustees did not approve the proposal on Wednesday.
“We will be in negative status next month if we do not make these shifts,” Rodriguez said. “This is approximately $2 million worth of reductions.”
Rodriguez said that the financial picture from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget revise this month will not improve the outlook.
“This is not going to get better,” she said. “It’s going to get worse.”
Trustee Kim De Serpa, who was on the board when it slashed numerous positions and programs during the 2008 economic recession, said that the district has not fully recovered from those actions.
“It really was heart-wrenching, because by the time it was over there wasn’t anything left to cut,” she said.
Now, with an economic recession a near certainty, and salaries and benefit costs going up, more could be on the way, she said.
“I think we all can agree that these are things we do not want to do,” she said. “Unfortunately I have a sinking feeling that this will be the start of what will be more cuts to come, and unless we make courageous decisions early I think we’re going to find ourselves going negative.”
Trustee Georgia Acosta said that the district has been “top-heavy” since she became involved with it in the 1980s.
Acosta pointed out that several board members during the March 11 meeting told Rodriguez to determine whether any cuts could be made at the managerial level. She added that she sees no evidence of that having been done.
“When we talk about right-sizing, we have to talk about that at every level of the district,” she said. “Not just at the very bottom level, to the people that are the very backbone of the district who actually work here and live here in this community.”
Acosta was also critical of the fact that the district has been deficit spending for years.
“I have yet to hear one solid valid resolve from the superintendent to resolve that,” she said. “That to me makes no logical sense, there is no responsible business practice in that.”
Rodriguez called the assertion that the district is top-heavy “inaccurate,” and pointed out that she has combed the budget to make cuts and reductions where she could.
Rodriguez said the district has eliminated “multiple” administrative positions and cut the extended learning staff by half.
It also froze managerial positions from the Special Education Department and reduced two district office managerial positions.
Rodriguez also disagreed that the district has not looked at managerial positions.
“We have looked at every position, one by one,” she said. “It’s not possible to only make cuts to administrators.”
