Live Oak School District plans to cut teachers, classroom aides in bid to solve budget crisis

Live Oak School District plans to slash the equivalent of nearly 40 full-time positions, including elementary teachers, instructional aides and a school psychologist, in hopes of stabilizing its ailing finances.

District administrators laid out a plan this week to trim millions in teacher and staff salaries, along with other expenses. Trustees are set to discuss the plan at a governing board meeting Wednesday night but won’t vote on the proposed cuts until a later date.

The stabilization plan calls for a mix of eliminating some positions, reducing the hours of others and opting not to fill vacant positions, which combined add up to the equivalent of 37.8 full-time employees. 

Among the cuts, the district is proposing to lay off seven full-time teachers from across its three elementary schools, eliminate one of its four school psychologist positions and reduce the hours for special education instructional aides, along with cuts to custodial, maintenance and administrative staff.

Almost half of the cuts involve positions that require a teaching credential, though board president Kristin Pfotenhauer said the district hopes to get state funding to be able to retain some of the positions. 

“It’s an awful process,” she told Lookout. “Nobody wants to make cuts that affect kids or community or requirements, or any of that. I’ve been on the other end – I’ve gotten [notices] both as a teacher and as an administrator.”

The board will likely not take a final vote to approve the stabilization plan until its March 13 meeting, Pfotenhauer said. State law requires the district to issue layoff notices by March 15. The cuts would take effect at the end of this school year or beginning of the next. Pfotenhauer said the state’s budget can change before it’s finalized, so the district could end up receiving more funding than it’s projecting and not have to make as many layoffs.

Live Oak School District serves about 1,675 students and employs about 280 teachers and staff. It runs three elementary schools, a middle school, an independent charter school and an alternative school. 

The proposed layoffs come as the district is struggling with a budget crisis that administrators say is fueled by declining enrollment and expected cuts to the state’s education budget. In total, the district estimates that the reductions and layoffs will save nearly $3 million during the 2024-25 fiscal year and $6 million by 2025-26.

In January, the County Office of Education warned the district that it would need to make  “significant decisions to make in order to remain fiscally solvent.” At the district’s previous meeting Feb. 7, teachers and parents begged the district to avoid layoffs of teachers and mental health staff that have been essential to students’ well-being. 

Lauren Pomrantz, the teachers union co-president, said teachers pleaded with district staff over the past couple of weeks to focus their planned layoffs on positions furthest from the students. 

“They’ve cut closest to students,” she said, adding that the teachers union membership is “very disheartened” by the planned layoffs. 

Pfotenhauer said administrators made their layoff decisions largely on the basis of declining enrollment and the need to maintain essential staff, such as those who provide mental health support. 

She added that she is confident the plan will help the district get back on track financially and emphasized that some of the staff who receive layoff notices will have opportunities to apply to other positions and to maintain full-time status. 

“I would hope that people would trust us to be making the best decisions that we can,” Pfotenhauer said. 

The district’s superintendent and three assistant superintendents drafted the planned layoffs with assistance from the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, an organization created by the state to help educational agencies manage their finances. 

Pomrantz said the teachers union hasn’t yet been able to talk with district officials to get a thorough explanation of what the cuts to teachers and other positions needing a teaching credential will look like, or if some will be reinstated with alternative funds like grants. But teachers said they were particularly surprised to see that an elementary school principal’s position is planned to be reduced to half time. 

“I don’t know if that is something that our administration has seen be successful,” Pomrantz said. “None of the other sites has a part-time elementary principal. So that came as a shock.”

She added that teachers are very concerned about the planned layoffs of seven full-time elementary teachers. Pomrantz said that because the district hasn’t hired many elementary teachers in the past few years, there will likely be tenured teachers who will have to be laid off, which is “unprecedented” in the district. 

“This number of having to reduce by seven is going to reach into our members who have been tenured in our district for years,” she said. “It’s a significant number of teachers – it’s nearly half of a school if you were to put all those teachers at one site.”

Cuts to school psychologists and physical education teachers “are particularly brutal,” Pomrantz said, as schools have seen a “huge uptick” in the emotional, mental and physical needs of students because of the long-term impacts of the pandemic. “It’s just really hard to stomach,” she said. 

Pfotenhauer said to replace an elementary PE teacher it’s likely that other teachers would organize physical activities for the students, as they have in the past. Two of the remaining school psychologists would likely split visits to schools or a similar arrangement, she added. 

Pfotenhauer said it’s not yet clear how the layoffs of seven full-time elementary teachers will be spread out across the district’s three elementary schools. She added that it’s possible that after the layoffs are decided, teachers might have to work at a different site if one school is left with a shortage of teachers. 

As part of the layoff process, the district is proposing that certificated teachers with certain credentials that are “difficult to hire” should not be considered for layoffs. For example, teachers with a Spanish Bilingual Crosscultural, Language and Academic Development (BCLAD) credential should be spared. That credential is needed for the district’s dual-language immersion program. The plan is also proposing an exception for teachers with an Early Childhood Education certificate. 

The district is also proposing cuts to classified staff, non-teaching positions such as custodians, instructional aides and administrative employees. The proposed layoffs include a full-time grounds/maintenance worker, a full-time financial analyst, a full-time director of family and community engagement and several other full-time positions. There are many partial reductions of positions, including four night custodian positions reduced by nearly 50% and four special education instructional aides by about 30% or more. 

Pfotenhauer said she hopes that the reduction in hours won’t cause the district to lose many employees who might seek work elsewhere if they can’t maintain full-time status or if they’re negatively affected financially in the long term. 

“I hope not. I hope that we can get the final decisions made quickly enough that people will experience this as a major inconvenience, and not a long-term problem,” she said. “We could lose some great people, because people want to look elsewhere. There are a lot of factors that go into that decision in terms of cost of living in the area.”

Diana Susoy, president of the classified staff’s union, said the proposed reductions would affect about 25% of all classified positions, though some are vacant and won’t be filled. About 20% of current classified employees will be affected by the cuts.

“When it comes to actual people loss that in most situations work directly with students, we are looking at an approximate 20% reduction,” she said in an email. “Big hit for the schools, students and the teachers as most of the classified staff is support staff.”

In addition to the planned layoffs, the district estimates it can save another $265,000 in the 2024-25 school year by reducing the cost of supplies and services. It also laid out plans to increase its revenue by $184,713 in fiscal year 2024-25 by adding another dual-language immersion class and raising the rents it charges to tenants. 

The district has been in contentious negotiations for almost two years with its tenants, local senior services organizations Community Bridges and Senior Network Services, which have been leasing a district building at 1777 Capitola Rd. for about 20 years. 

District officials gave the two organizations an eviction notice in May 2022 after announcing plans to build teacher housing on the site. Officials have since given them multiple extensions to their lease. 

Last week, Community Bridges said it submitted a letter of intent to purchase the Capitola Road property for $2.4 million so it can continue to operate a Meals on Wheels program at the site. Pfotenhauer said while the school district could use that money toward the budget crisis, it would have to move forward with its layoffs regardless.

“We don’t have any intention of selling a piece of property as a stopgap to this,” she said. “We need to staff according to our current enrollment and attendance.” 

Currently, the district is looking into purchasing a different property to build workforce housing. Pfotenhauer said if the district can purchase the other site, it will sell the property to the senior services organizations. 

On Wednesday, the governing board will also consider Superintendent Daisy Morales’ request that the board rescind her recent salary increase. 

According to the board’s agenda documents, Morales and the district’s three assistant superintendents have all volunteered to retract more than $40,000 in raises the board approved at its Feb. 7 meeting. 

Morales also suggested that other directors, principals and assistant principals join the superintendents to “unite in a gesture of solidarity” and also volunteer to give back their raises. The suggestion includes an elementary school principal and the assistant principal whose full-time positions the district is proposing to cut to part-time, according to documents contained in the board’s Wednesday agenda.

“She just put that out as a suggestion that they might want to consider,” Pfotenhauer said. “There’s no pressure for them to do that.”

The school district is separately asking voters to approve a $44 million bond on the March 5 ballot. The money can’t be used toward staff and teacher salaries and would instead potentially go toward projects such as a $10 million gymnasium and multipurpose building for Green Acres Elementary School and replacing Live Oak Elementary’s roof.  

The school board meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday in the multipurpose room at Green Acres Elementary. 

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