As enrollment falls, some Santa Cruz County school districts see their ranks of administrators swell

Several Santa Cruz County’s school districts have hired more administrators since the pandemic even as they suffered from years of declining enrollment and struggled to balance their budgets, state education data show.

Scotts Valley Unified, Live Oak and Pajaro Valley Unified school districts all increased the number of administrators employed at their sites between the 2019-2020 to the 2023-2024 school years, according to statistics released this month by the California Department of Education. 

The county’s largest school district, Pajaro Valley Unified, lost 2,190 students,  a decline of 12.4%, even as it added 20 full-time equivalent administrators, an increase of 28.3% for that time period. In that time, the district lost 52.8 full-time equivalent teachers, or a drop of 6.7%.

Scotts Valley Unified added three administrators and Live Oak School District added two, while experiencing modest declines in student enrollment. Santa Cruz County’s seven other school districts saw no change or slight decreases in their number of administrators. San Lorenzo Valley Unified and Soquel Union Elementary school districts recorded declines across the student, teacher and administrator categories.

Overall, Santa Cruz County schools lost 3,572 students, or 10.6% of its total enrollment and added 17.3 administrators, the state data for non-charter public schools show. 

The post-pandemic changes in Pajaro Valley, Live Oak and Scotts Valley largely mirror statewide trends, with many California school districts seeing a similar increase in administrators while enrolling fewer students. The state’s public schools added about 3,780 administrators, or about 15%, while enrollment schools across the state declined by 6.5% during the same time period.  

Live Oak School District Chief Business Officer Jenny Im, who was formerly at PVUSD, said she believes the increase in administrators, even in the face of enrollment decline, is due to a historic number of new programs launched by the state education department in recent years. 

“I’ve never seen this number of programs coming in,” she said. 

Im said the district’s two additional administrators were hired as part of two new grant-funded positions that were tied to the expanded learning, or afterschool programs, and behavioral health services. She said the district has also downsized in the past two years by eliminating or restructuring several management positions.

County Superintendent of Schools Faris Sabbah told Lookout that while he hasn’t thoroughly reviewed the data yet, he sees an increase in administrators as a response to rising challenges school districts face — demands to meet more health and social needs of communities. 

Such programs, often funded by state or federal dollars, typically come with added compliance and reporting requirements, prompting school districts to hire more administrators to oversee them. For example, three years ago, the California Department of Education launched the universal meals program, which mandates that TK-12 schools provide breakfast and lunch to all students, not just low-income students. 

“As schools have become more like hubs for the community and [are] providing a broader range of services, that has meant that we are looking at the implementation of more behavioral health services in schools than ever before,” said Sabbah. “Which would mean that there would be new programs, hopefully new funding that goes with that, and also administrative overhead for that.” 

School districts statewide typically spend the majority – about 85% – of their budgets on staff and benefits, of which about 5% to 6% is spent on administrators, depending on the size of the district. Over the past two years, as one-time federal COVID relief funds have ended and declining enrollment has reduced state funding tied to attendance and enrollment, at least two Santa Cruz County districts have struggled to maintain balanced budgets. Live Oak and Pajaro Valley Unified school districts stopped replacing open positions and implemented painful layoffs in order to fill budget gaps. 

Sabbah said it’s useful for educational institutions to monitor their staffing levels to ensure that they’re not top-heavy with administrators but that they’re also adequately addressing students’ needs. 

“You need administrative positions to properly oversee, implement and design,” he said. “But we want to be as efficient as possible so we can maximize the resources that are providing the direct services.” 

At PVUSD, which accounted for the majority of the decline in student enrollment and the largest increase in administrators between the 2019-20 and 2023-24 school years, the rising number of administrators in the face of declining enrollment “reflects the district’s intentional investment in expanded services, compliance requirements, and student-centered initiatives funded largely through external sources and one-time funds,” district spokesperson Alicia Jimenez said in a statement. The district declined to make anyone available for an interview for this story.

Jimenez also wrote that many of those roles were grant-funded and didn’t pull money from the general fund, or the district’s core budget for educational services. The district, she said, spends about 6% of its budget on school and district administration salaries and benefits – around the statewide average, according to data from the Public Policy Institute of California

“The district continuously evaluates staffing levels to ensure they are aligned with student needs, legal requirements, and fiscal responsibility,” she said. “We are, and have traditionally been, right at or slightly below the state average.”