Quick Take
Retired special needs teacher Woody Rehanek believes Pajaro Valley Unified School District’s unusually high rates of special needs students are linked to decades of pesticide exposure near schools and homes. He’s shocked by the district’s December decision to cut 160 positions, including 40 serving special needs students. He cites research showing organophosphates and related chemicals can impair brain development, contributing to learning disabilities. He calls on berry growers to go organic near schools and make large donations to make up the budget gaps. The PVUSD cuts, he warns, could trigger lawsuits and cause lifelong harm to kids and our community.
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As a retired Pajaro Valley Unified School District special needs teacher, I watched with heartbreaking empathy as dozens of nurses, nursing assistants, behavior technicians, instructional assistants, teachers and counselors eloquently asked the school board not to cut 160 positions to make up a $15 million deficit next year.
It was a chorus of pleading voices that got nowhere.
At that Dec. 11 meeting, both staff and parents noted that special needs teaching is already short-staffed and that the proposed reductions would deal a crushing blow to our most needy and vulnerable students.
Gerardo Castillo, the newly hired chief business officer, explained that the district’s financial condition was so bleak, the cuts, including 40 special ed positions, had to happen.
I disagree.
The district has a $45 million reserve. Castillo and others argued against using it as we would risk not meeting California’s requirement for a minimum reserve for “uncertain times.”
As I see it, we are already in uncertain times.
PESTICIDES IN THE PAJARO VALLEY: Read more Lookout news and Community Voices opinion coverage here
We should take from the reserves. And, we should make berry growers like Driscoll’s, Naturipe, Giant, Well Pict and their contract growers step up by going organic near homes and schools and by making major donations to make up the budget shortfall so we can keep the essential employees who help our special students.
After all, a wealth of studies point to berry growers bearing some responsibility for the high level of special needs students in our district.
The Campaign for Organic & Regenerative Agriculture (CORA) has already started a petition to demand Driscoll’s go organic.
But I think we need even more. We need the special ed teachers back.
The numbers explain it best.
In 2024-25, PVUSD had 15.61% special education-qualifying students, which is above the Santa Cruz County and California averages. (When I retired eight years ago, our district had 12% special ed students.)
What accounts for the large change?
Want to take action?
• Email Santa Cruz Deputy Agricultural Commissioner Graham Hunting to request 1-mile no-spray buffers instead of the current quarter-mile buffers while schools are in session.
• Email the California Department of Pesticide Regulation to demand an immediate phase-out of all organophosphate pesticides.
• Sign the CORA petition to push Driscoll’s to go organic.
A new pesticide mapping tool, the California People and Pesticides Explorer, provides data on each school district in the state. In the seven-year period from 2017 to 2022, a total of 133,532 pounds of organophosphate (OP) pesticides was applied in the area served by PVUSD,including Pajaro Middle, Hall District Elementary and Ohlone Elementary.
According to the 25-year-old UC Berkeley School of Public Health CHAMACOS study, OP exposures within 1 kilometer during pregnancy and/or child neurodevelopment may result in learning disabilities, lower IQ, cause attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism and behavioral problems by the time children are seven and attending school. A blue-ribbon panel at UCLA School of Law recommended a total phase-out and banning of OPs worldwide in October 2017.
OPs work by disrupting a brain messenger chemical called acetylcholine, but they are not the only family of chemicals that work this way. Another pesticide family – known as carbamates – functions the same way.
From 2017 to 2022, 49,531 pounds of carbamates were applied in our district, bringing the total of organophosphates plus carbamates to 183,113 pounds of brain-disrupting chemicals dumped on our community.
For decades, it has been hard to sort out a smoking gun of causation to “prove” that certain chemicals contribute to learning disabilities, but we are getting closer as granular data accumulates over time.
Another study, released Sept. 1, 2025, found that California OP use from 2017 to 2021 had declined overall. Still, an average of 7.5% of pregnant women lived within 1 kilometer of OP spraying.
Yet usage remained high in Monterey County; 50% of pregnant women lived within 1 kilometer of OP applications in 2021. Santa Cruz County ranked fourth statewide, with 29% of pregnant women living within 1 kilometer of OP applications.
And by poundage and proximity, the vast majority of those Santa Cruz County mothers lived in and around the Pajaro Valley.
Children whose mothers are exposed to OPs during pregnancy are significantly more likely to have learning disabilities by the time they reach primary grades. A 2016 study in Beyond Pesticides found that a 1-kilometer proximity to fields with about 550 pounds (249 kilograms) of OP application resulted in an average 2-point drop in the children’s IQ and a 3-point drop in verbal reasoning.
Based on the research, it’s likely that OP and carbamate use are contributing to the prevalence of special needs students in PVUSD.
Although in 2020, new restrictions eliminated most uses of chlorpyrifos – the most heavily used OP in California – multiple OP insecticides and herbicides remain. Some, like malathion, are also carcinogens.
Safe Ag Safe Schools and CORA have been urging Driscoll’s and its contract growers to go organic near schools and homes, asking the Santa Cruz and Monterey county ag commissioners to create a 1-mile buffer zone free from all chemical applications when schools are in session. State law now requires only a quarter-mile buffer, which is inadequate since some OPs are known to drift much farther.
Pajaro Valley berry growers have been adding to the OP burden.
From 2017 to 2022, berry growers applied 62,056 pounds of OPs in PVUSD. That’s 46% of the 133,582-pound total OPs.
Now is the time for Driscoll’s, Naturipe, Giant, Well Pict and their contract growers to step up and contribute to our community. It’s their duty.
The prevalence of neurotoxins in our valley adds to our already unique set of challenges. Among them: Our district has an expensive, stand-alone rather than countywide special ed administration (SELPA). We also have the least affordable housing market in the state, and we have increasing numbers of special needs students.
This uniqueness makes PVUSD hard to compare to other school districts.
Our uniqueness demands creative solutions. The services, frequency and time allotted on individual education plans (IEPs) are legally mandated; lack of resources is no excuse under the law.
To cut those services, as our district did, is to invite major lawsuits.
It’s also a terrible tragedy for our neediest kids.
Hopefully, we can stir the conscience of our most wealthy and enlist the better angels of our community to do the right thing and help our kids and district.
Woody Rehanek was a farmworker in Washington state for 18 years and a special education teacher in Pajaro Valley Unified School District for 18 years. He is a member of Safe Ag Safe Schools and a founding member of the Campaign for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture. He lives in Watsonville.