|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Pleasanton Unified School District counselors, health service assistants and custodians were just some of the positions that the Board of Trustees discussed cutting as part of last week’s budget discussion.
During the special board workshop on Oct. 16, the trustees reviewed the full list of 60 proposed reductions to the 2026-27 budget, which included cuts to staff across various departments, reductions for district office management and the phasing out of programs such as the elementary school outdoor education program.
“We need a balanced budget where the revenues generated meet the expenditures for that year, knowing that every year there’s slight variations,” said PUSD assistant superintendent of business services Ahmad Sheikholeslami. “We need to have flexibility in the budget as well,” he added.
Members of the affected employee groups and some parents took to the podium to speak against several of the proposed cuts, many of whom were met with thunderous rounds of applause from the audience to show solidarity against the most controversial cuts.
“These cuts are looking to directly affect the educational services that our students get,” Association of Pleasanton Teachers President Evan Branning said during the meeting. “You have been set up for failure … you were given a list of $13 million (in cuts) with no options to pick. You will drain our schools; you will leave us in worse shape than we have ever been.”
District staff said the range of total cuts should be somewhere between $10 million and $13.5 million — all of the proposed cuts in the list presented that night total to just over $13.4 million in savings, according to staff’s presentation.
PUSD is currently facing a structural deficit that staff have attributed to declining enrollment, rising operating costs like salaries and benefits and the expiration of one-time state and federal funds.
“We’ve basically been spending more than receiving for the last seven years,” Superintendent Maurice Ghysels said during the meeting. “We’ve been deficit-spending, and we have to correct our structural deficit.”
According to staff, PUSD’s unrestricted expenditures exceeded its revenues by $7.2 million during the 2024-25 fiscal year which, as a result, reduced the district’s reserves to 0.55% — well below the state’s 3% minimum reserve requirement.
These financial challenges were further laid out by the Alameda County Office of Education in a Sept. 12 letter explaining how the county approved the district’s 2025-26 budget with several conditions that PUSD needs to meet by Nov. 8 to address the budget shortfall in the current and following fiscal years.
“Over the current three-year budget period, the district’s Unrestricted General Fund reserves are projected to decline from $1.95 million in 2024-25 to a negative $29 million in 2027-28,” according to the county letter. “Similarly, the Restricted General Fund reserves are projected to decrease from $8.6 million in 2024–25 to $5.6 million by 2027–28. When a district plans to spend more on its core program than it takes in in revenue, it is called a structural deficit.”
Although staff noted some improvements in the district’s year-end closing financial estimates, changes in non-positional salary costs and special education costs have improved the overall budget challenges, the district will need to cut deeper this school year in order to ensure long-term financial security.
“We always knew that we would have to do additional cuts this year — that was never a mystery,” Board President Justin Brown said during the Oct. 16 meeting.
Over the past year, the school board initiated a “Budget Engagement & Realignment” process that has included staff and community town halls and a sequence of special board workshops that all began earlier this month as a way to gather input from the community regarding future budget cuts and revenue-generating options.
The goal is to identify and approve a set of reduction and revenue strategies for the 2026-27 budget by Nov. 6.
Staff went through each of the line reductions and answered questions from the board who asked how the proposed reductions would impact students and offered insight on other possible areas to cut.
Some of the main discussion points had to do with revisiting staff’s proposal to reduce the work year of district office management by two years and the overall cuts to district administrators. Some trustees said they wanted staff to see if that number could be increased and if staff could find more cuts in the district office so that they could try and avoid making cuts to positions and departments that would directly affect more students.
However, most of last week’s discussion circled back to the employee positions that would likely get cut as part of the proposed reductions.
According to the preliminary list of reductions, the following positions would be on the chopping block if they are not ruled out by the board: elementary school vice principals, high school coordinators of operations, middle school and high school secretaries, health service assistants at all grade levels and various types of specialists in science and physical education.
Integration and intervention specialists as well as library assistants were some of the other positions listed for reductions.
“All of these different people you guys are trying to cut, you’re cutting layers of safety nets away from our kids,” Hannah Koning, a PUSD parent, said during public comment.
Sheryl Pacheco, the head counselor at Amador Valley High School, also said high school counselors are already overworked due to last year’s cuts and any additional reductions will reflect negatively in their ability to help students.
“There’s an increase in need and there’s less counseling and I’m worried for our kids,” Pacheco said.
Trustees Mary Jo Carreon and Charlie Jones spoke up about some of the cuts having to do with employees’ professional development which would have to be first negotiated and agreed upon by the respective employee unions. Carreon made the argument that if the unions don’t agree with the cuts, it could leave the district in a bad position with those labor unions.
Other cuts that would need to be negotiated with respective unions include reducing the work year for certain staff and increasing the staff allocation ratio, which could lead to higher class sizes and combined classes.
Jones also questioned just how much the district actually has to make in cuts. He said he would like PUSD to do more in validating the need to make over $10 million in cuts this year.
“It’s all in the classroom for these (cuts). All of them, almost,” Jones said. “We have to be true about how we got into this situation, why we’re here, where we’re at and what we have to do to compensate for that reality.”
Toward the end of the meeting Brown said the board needs to be united in agreeing on the district’s financial state if they want to make any meaningful decisions when it comes to the reductions.
Brown was also the only one at the meeting who threw out a potential reduction target of minimum $11 million in reductions that the district should make based on staff’s data.
“If we do our deep dive with staff and the number changes, then we could change the target but ($11 million to $11.5 million) is the realistic number because I don’t want to be in the same position next year,” Brown said. “Last year we cut the absolute minimum, and I’m proud of the fact we kept cuts as far away from the classroom as possible … round two, this is a lot deeper set of cuts.”
Board Vice President Kelly Mokashi also said that while she agrees that the district needs to take ownership of its past financial mistakes and commit to do the work regarding the budget cuts, she said she didn’t want to rush any decisions.
District staff is working on further analysis based on the board’s input and will return to the board this Thursday (Oct. 23) for another workshop. Following that week’s meeting, trustees will be tasked with narrowing down the proposed list of reductions by Oct. 30, which is when the board is set to meet again this month for another special budgeting session.
'Discouraged and demoralized': PUSD substitute teachers express concern over pay cutsJanuary 21, 2026 11:29 am
The classrooms have been hit way too hard already.
Which district office positions will be removed?
All the horrible plans from the Hagland years, unrestrained by our school board, have run our beautiful district into a huge, muddy ditch. The public will expect HARD CUTS within the walls of our needlessly fancy district office building and far, far away from direct instruction. We’ve asked repeatedly for a side-by-side comparison of DO staff numbers today and from 10-15 years ago when we had more students. Bloated departments today with 3+ hires doing the job 1 person did before is what we’d see. Please join me in demanding transparency to get us out of the ditch while protecting all TK- 12 students .
I have suggested in the past that PUSD is not a starter district for a superintendent. And so here we are with horrible results from a person who had no experience in the job. I hope Superintendent Ghysels will right the ship and the board will look seriously at those people with experience for our next superintendent.