Pajaro Valley Unified school board approves layoffs of about 100 full-time staff

Staff, students and parents this week decried the layoffs of the equivalent of about 100 full-time special education staff, mental health clinicians, healthcare assistants, teachers and academic and social-emotional counselors by the Pajaro Valley Unified School District board to address its deficit.

After initially approving preliminary layoffs of the equivalent of nearly 160 full-time staff in December, the seven-member school board approved the reduced number of final layoffs Wednesday night. The district trimmed the number of layoffs after adjusting for employee retirements and departures. 

Watsonville High School teacher Donna LeFever told the board Wednesday evening she felt that district officials had not been to the schools to fully understand the real needs of students if they were considering approving the layoffs. 

“The kids are already suffering,” she said. “They need more resources, and you’re taking them away.”

This marks the district’s second consecutive year of reductions. In mid-2024, just months after Superintendent Heather Contreras was hired, she convened a budget advisory committee to address the district’s budget deficit. PVUSD officials said rising costs, the loss of COVID funding and years of declining enrollment were driving the deficit, and significant reductions were needed to stabilize its finances. 

After the committee finished its work, the school board approved layoffs for the equivalent of about 60 full-time positions, including about 46 teachers. After adjusting for retirements and resignations, just one teacher with a 0.6 assignment was ultimately laid off. During board meetings, however, Contreras emphasized that more cuts would be needed in the coming year to ensure fiscal sustainability, which led to the cuts approved by the board on Wednesday. 

Throughout the two rounds of layoffs, parents, students and staff urged the district to rescind all of the layoffs. Staff argued that layoffs of teachers will make class sizes unmanageable and student learning will suffer. Parents and mental health clinicians say eliminating all 13 of the district’s mental health clinicians will leave students without life-saving support. Nurses say layoffs of behavior technicians, healthcare assistants and instructional aides will put student safety at risk.

Brandon Diniz, teachers union president, told Lookout that the union is “dismayed” by the board’s final approval of the layoffs, which fall on the “backs of students.” 

“These decisions will ultimately hurt our students, and we are here to fight for them,” he said. “Our members and community showed up to fight for our students, and when the leadership of this district takes action that will cause harm to our students, we can’t help but continue to lose confidence in this superintendent.”

Diniz also criticized the school board for approving the hire of a deputy superintendent to replace former assistant superintendent Claudia Monjaras at the same time the district approved the layoffs. 

Diniz represents staff with teaching credentials, such as teachers and counselors, also called certificated staff. Among the total full-time-equivalent positions being laid off are the equivalent of 57.95 full-time certificated staff. 

Though the layoff notices are final, the district can rehire staff if more retirements or vacancies come up for positions they decide they need to fill. 

The union that represents classified staff, which include healthcare assistants, behavior technicians and mental health clinicians, decried the loss of their coworkers. District officials didn’t provide the total number of classified layoffs, so Lookout calculated the total based on the resolution that lists the positions they laid off, for a total of about 51.  

Classified union president Ashley Yoro Flowers told Lookout that schools are “already spread thin” and workers are concerned that further cuts will limit their ability to do their jobs and keep students safe. 

“The district is asking classified employees to absorb more, absorb more,” she said. “We’re going to cut from you guys, and we’re going to hit you guys the hardest, but we need you to do more for the same pay.”

Yoro Flowers, who previously worked as a healthcare assistant in the district, said among their more serious concerns are the layoffs of healthcare assistant. She said the district cut vacant healthcare assistant positions and laid off others, reducing the total from 27 to 18 starting next year, meaning each assistant will be responsible for more than one school. 

She said healthcare assistants are the health professional personnel who administer medication, respond to medical emergencies, perform lifesaving interventions such as using automated external defibrillator (AED) services or CPR, and help implement healthcare plans for medically fragile students. They also work closely with the district’s eight nurses. 

Nurse representative Carolyn West on Wednesday gave the board a letter signed by all of the district’s nurses denouncing the layoffs of healthcare assistants, instructional aides and behavior technicians. 

“The impending budget reductions for the 2026-27 school year … will create an immediate, systemic risk to student safety and campus operational security,” they wrote. 

The letter, called Assignment Despite Objection, notifies the district that the nurses believe they’ve been given an assignment “that creates potentially unsafe conditions for students and staff, or violates state mandates.” 

They listed several reasons for objecting to their assignments, including that their caseloads are too high, they’re working at too many school sites, untrained staff are being asked to do specialized health tasks and office staff have already refused to do tasks because they lack the medical training. 

They urged the district to meet with the nurses to figure out how the work that was previously done by the now laid-off healthcare assistants will be done by other school staff. In the letter, the nurses said they will try to do their jobs despite objecting to these circumstances, but because of the situation, “full liability” for “adverse consequences” falls on the employer. 

Yoro Flowers said that the nurses understand that they can’t do their jobs effectively if they don’t have healthcare assistants at every school site, which won’t be possible after the layoffs. 

“The classified workforce is literally the workforce that opens the school, closes the school, cleans the school,” she said. “We are the first people here and the last to leave. We are like boots on the ground with the students every day.”

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