Pajaro Valley Unified School District’s governing board on Feb. 25 rejected two proposals to reduce teachers and staff, and approved other layoffs, including 45 teachers, during a raucous, contentious meeting that included bickering between trustees and heckling from attendees in the packed boardroom.
That heckling came to a head when board President Olivia Flores refused to relent in her decision to limit public speaking to 30 minutes. She explained that many of the members of the audience had already spoken on the same issue during the Feb. 12 meeting.
Several audience members shouted their disapproval. The meeting was halted—and the board was forced to briefly recess—when PVFT negotiations chair Brandon Diniz called for a caucus among the audience members to choose those who would speak.
“If you’re going to play that game, then the community deserves the opportunity to identify our speakers,” he said. The trustees returned after about 20 minutes.
The special meeting was convened when Trustee Joy Flynn asked for it to return after a Feb. 12 meeting during which the board rejected all the cuts.
Flynn explained that she had more questions that weren’t answered during the previous meeting, and said she was concerned that the reductions at the previous meetings were all lumped together.
“It was an attempt to bring forward some more clarity and transparency around what I’ve been calling a peanut in a cake,” she said. “And if you’re allergic to peanuts that means the whole cake has to go.”
On the table for the first round of reductions were teacher positions recommended by the district’s Sustainable Budget Team (SBT) and approved by the board on Feb. 12. The SBT was convened last year to help balance the budget after the district spent one-time Covid relief funds on ongoing staff positions.
But the board rejected that after the trustees voted down two motions by Medina to table the item and then to put all the cuts at zero.
This included 4.5 assistant principal positions, five counselor positions, 12 elementary release teachers and eight elementary release teachers.
Navarro then made a motion to approve the reduction, which failed after trustees Jessica Carrasco, Carol Turley, Medina and Flynn voted no. Trustee Daniel Dodge Jr. was absent.
The trustees then rejected a proposal to cut classified positions—also recommended by the SBT—including three mental health clinicians, three technology support technicians, one communication technician, a child welfare and attendance analyst, a warehouse and delivery driver and a payroll technician.
Trustees Flynn, Carrasco and Medina voted no and it failed. PVUSD Superintendent Heather Contreras told the board as the meeting drew to a close that she is “really concerned” that those cuts were not approved.
“We are choosing to keep those positions that were added with one-time dollars for another year,” she said. “Those positions will carry forward, and that’s $5 million worth of positions that will continue next year.”
Contreras warned that a larger number of reductions will return to the board next year.
“Those were one-time funded positions,” she said. “We no longer have those dollars.”
The trustees then approved a proposal to eliminate just over 46 teacher positions, which staff recommended as the district faces at least a decade of projected declining enrollment. According to PVUSD Chief Business Officer Jenny Im, who announced her retirement several days after the meeting, the district will lose an estimated 600 students next year, amounting to losing millions of dollars.
Navarro called the cuts a “worst-case scenario” that may be reduced or eliminated by the number of retiring teachers and those who are leaving the district.
“There’s a possibility these positions don’t actually get laid off,” she said.
Navarro also warned that many districts have recently been forced to issue layoff notices to their employees and are making “deep cuts.”
“Anyone who does not realize over the next four years that things are going to get worse has their head in the sand,” Navarro said. “We need to be grown-ups now and make tough decisions now, otherwise next year we’re going to make double cuts and it will hurt even worse.”
A motion to cut just over 10 instructional assistants then passed, with Turley, Navarro, Flynn and Flores in favor.
