Last week, the Pittsburg Unified School District school board voted to reduce its budget by a little over $16 million over the next two school years.
The District approved an immediate cut of $8.3 million for 2025-26 and $7.81 million for the 2026-27 school years. The school board voted 5-0 with Trustees George Miller, Heliodoro Moreno, De’Shawn Woolridge, Taylor Sims, Destiny Briscoe all in favor.
Under the motion, it approved the cuts without eliminating Elementary VPs, 2 TOSAs, 2 Elementary Arts Teachers, 2 Parent And Family Liaisons and 1 Custodian for the 2026-2027 School Year and the reduction of $7.81 Million for the 2026-2027 School Year.
According to the 33-slide presentation:
Why they are in the situation
- Expiration of One-Time Funds
- Positions in One-Time Funds include:
- CRAs, Elementary
- Counselors, Behavior
- supports, Teachers on
- Special Assignment, PAFLs
- Loss of Revenue Due to Lower Average Daily Attendance
- Pre-Pandemic ADA: 95%
- Current ADA: 90%
- Approximately 9 million loss over the MYP (Multiple Year Projections: 3 year budget)
- We were making reductions pre-pandemic (February, 2020)
- Rising costs of healthcare, special education services (County Programs, Non Public Schools, Contracted Services have significantly increased costs)
- COLA does not cover automatic expenses (Step and Column, Retirement Contribution, Health Care) and past raises
The District also pointed out they began making cuts last February, which included $1.2 million in personnel reductions and an additional 330k in non-personnel (plus used additional combinations of carryover funds, off-setting).
The District will have to take action on layoffs by March 12.
According to the agenda item, here is the background:
In order to address the District’s budget shortfall for the 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 school years, the District will need to make budget reductions. The main reasons for the budget reductions are the expiration of one-time funds and the lower funding for our average daily attendance.
The one-time funds allowed us to reinstate some previously approved reductions and also add support to schools to assist with the transition from distance learning to in-person learning. We have been planning over the last few years for the expiration of these funds and we have moved many of those additional positions to on-going funding sources. We always knew we would have to make tough decisions as these funds expire.
The State of California chooses to fund based on Average Daily Attendance, not on enrollment. This means if there are 100 students and on average 90 attend school each day, we only receive funding for 90 students. Our ADA was approximately 95% pre-pandemic. It is approximately 90%. We have to submit 3-year budgets and the impact of the lower ADA over those 3 years is a loss of 9million dollars.
We started presenting information on the reductions in October, 2024. We have presented the budget at numerous public meetings. The Superintendent and staff have taken into consideration current and prior feedback from the surveys and feedback of staff, students, parents, the District Priorities, Labor Contract and Legal Requirements in making the recommendations.
The Superintent’s recommendations for reductions were presented at the February 12th Board meeting. Due to a technical issue, we held an additional Board meeting on February 19th to continue the item. At that time, the Board gave direction for other personnel reductions to be included and to put back some of the other recommended personnel reductions.
At tonight’s meeting (Feb 26th), these revised recommendations will be presented for the Board to discuss and determine if they will make any final decisions.
Documents
- Feb 26: Budget Reduction Recommendations – click here
- Feb 19: Budget Reduction Recommendations – click here