‘An opportunity to improve’: Ghysels shares optimistic outlook in State of the District despite ongoing budget crisis

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The 2025-26 school year for the Pleasanton Unified School District has been a particularly long and, at times, difficult one for parents, teachers and administrators.

Despite significant progress on bond-funded facility improvements, the past year was dominated by budget cut discussions, which continue to concern many parents, some of whom are reconsidering their child’s future with the district.

“We are being told there are ‘no choices’ but to make drastic cuts that will harm our children’s education, yet those claims are based on financial numbers the community cannot verify or trust,” Beth Thompson, a parent at Donlon Elementary School, told the Pleasanton Weekly in an email statement.

“As a parent who chose Pleasanton for its schools, this ongoing mismanagement is deeply disappointing,” she added.

According to the district’s budget website, PUSD’s ongoing $8.2 million and $750,000 structural deficit in the 2026-27 and 2027-28 fiscal years, respectively, have forced the school board to make some difficult cuts and reductions for those two fiscal years.

PUSD’s fiscal challenges stem from depleted one-time funds, rising costs and, more notably, declining enrollment.

“Our enrollment is our lifeblood,” Superintendent Maurice Ghysels said during the March 17 annual State of the District event at the Firehouse Arts Center. 

According to the district’s “Budget Questions and Answers” page, since the 2019-20 year PUSD has lost about $18 million in ongoing revenue due to declining enrollment. 

“LCFF funding is based primarily on average daily attendance (ADA), which is driven by enrollment,” the FAQ page states. “As enrollment declines, total funding declines as well, even if the calculated funding per student is higher.”

Trustees spent months discussing and going over the impacts of cuts before they eventually identified just over $11 million in reductions.

Although the board approved the reductions and managed to keep most of the cuts away from the classroom, roughly half of the cuts require negotiation with labor unions. Consequently, the school board had to approve a contingency plan in February for additional cuts should negotiations fail.

That contingency plan included dozens of employee positions and services that parents, students, teachers and trustees did not want to be cut, including science and music specialists, child welfare specialists, health assistants, intervention specialists and other employee positions that directly work with and serve students.

Over the past few months, parents and other community members have voiced their concerns regarding these cuts and on March 21, several dozens of them showed up to the Ken Mercer Sports Park to participate in the “Save Our Schools” rally. The event, which saw as much as 30 people at one time, was meant to inform the community about the cuts to programs including science and music, which would directly affect students.

For parents like Jenika Liverpool, who has a second grade student at Donlon and who participated in the rally, these programs were one of the main reasons she and her family moved from Florida, which is why she said it’s been disappointing to see the recent discussions about budget cuts.

“To now have those potentially be taken away, we’re rethinking (whether we) even want to live here,” Liverpool said. “Does it make more sense to get the exact same education somewhere closer to my spouse’s job?”

However, one of the issues with the cuts specifically to teacher and staff positions is that negotiations for roughly $5 million are still ongoing, meaning that if those negotiations succeed, the district might not have to follow through with those contingency plan cuts.

“As additional revenues are considered … some layoff notices may be rescinded,” Board President Kelly Mokashi said.

According to PUSD safety and communications coordinator Susanne Frey, based on the February reduction-in-force (RIF) resolutions, the district has already sent out about 125 preliminary layoff notices to district employees, representing about 76 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions. Any potential layoff notices could be rescinded before the final layoff notice deadline of May 15, depending on the status of negotiations.

One question that came up during the State of the District event, and at several previous school board meetings was: Why doesn’t PUSD just cut more from management and keep the cuts far away from the classroom?

However, that is essentially what the school board did when it identified the reductions last November. Some of the cuts the board identified included reducing work years by four days for Ghysels and by three days for district office management, including the executive cabinet. Site management will also have their work years reduced by three days.

“Last year and this year, we have decreased total management expenditures by … 16%,” Ghysels said. In the same period, he said the district decreased certificated staff salary expenditures by 0.69% and increased classified salary expenditures by 1.4%.

Many community members also expressed anger over the fact that some of the top administrators have well over six figures. But according to the district’s budget website, over the past five years the board approved executive cabinet salary schedule increased “amounted to 7.6%”.

“Over the same five-year period, salary schedules increased by 19.0% for certificated, 19.8% for classified, and 10.7% for management,” according to the district.

Ghysels also emphasized that a line must be drawn, particularly for top administrative and crucial staff positions who handle tasks like budgets and human resources because failure to do so could ultimately cost the district.

“I’ve seen this happen in organizations and particularly in school districts; when you cut too much you actually start losing money,” Ghysels said.

Despite this, some community members believe more proactive steps are necessary to prevent PUSD from repeatedly facing these challenging budget discussions.

“The conversations that I’ve had with other parents have been more about what’s happening with this mistake and how we ensure this isn’t going to continue to happen,” Liverpool said, adding that parents might feel differently if they actually saw more solutions being enacted for the future.

Ghysels acknowledged some of the errors the district made in not calculating or accounting for certain expenditures. One example of this was when the unaudited actuals for the 2024-25 budget were prepared, the district discovered that the most recently adopted budget did not include certain recurring, non-salaried expenditures such as stipends and substitute teacher pay, which contributed to a nearly $3.5 million variance.

However, according to the district budget website, this was a “one-time omission during the budget development process and not a misuse or loss of funds”.

“So in terms of trust, it’s really easy to say ‘You made a mistake, you blew it, fire people and then everything is going to be OK,'” Ghysels said. 

But he also said that money is a small percentage of the larger issue that is Pleasanton’s financial challenges. 

He also said the district has gone about addressing its fiscal issues by working with the Alameda County Office of Education, which has since taken a look at PUSD’s finances, to find ways to improve its budget. He also noted the help PUSD has received from other fiscal health experts including the “Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team”, which has been working on a fiscal health assessment that was scheduled to be presented at the March 26 school board meeting.

“We look at this crisis … as an opportunity to improve,” Ghysels said. 

That’s why the district is beginning to look at other revenue sources like bringing in new students from outside the PUSD boundaries, leasing its empty space at the district offices to new tenants and pursuing a parcel tax.

Ghysels said during the state of the district event that there are around 100 districts in California that have a parcel tax and by joining that list, it could give PUSD some much needed revenue.

“A parcel tax, roughly $50 to $1,000 a parcel … that would fund us in an ongoing way,” Ghysels said.

The school board expressed initial support for the tax at an October board meeting but staff still have work to do — polling the community, deciding on an election date and settling on what the potential new revenue would be used for — before the tax is placed on a ballot for residents to approve.

During the State of the District address, Mokashi addressed another critical question: Why does PUSD have facility renovation funds but not enough for employee salaries?

The simple answer lies in two general obligation bond measures: the $395 million Measure I, approved by voters in 2022, and the $270 million Measure I1, approved in 2016.

Due to the way they are legally structured, bond funds are restricted; they can only be allocated to the specific projects presented to voters. Consequently, PUSD is legally prohibited from using this money for any purpose other than those designated projects.

But because of this, and through continuous oversight efforts, the district has actually been able to keep a steady pace on delivering those projects that voters wanted to see funded and completed.

“We are on time and under budget on all of our projects,” Ghysels said.

Some of the projects that were highlighted during the State of the District event were the various transitional kindergarten (TK) expansion and modernization projects. 

One of the projects completed last year was the Mohr Elementary School renovation project, which modernized three kindergarten and TK classrooms. PUSD also began construction on new TK classrooms and facility upgrades at Donlon, Valley View and Fairlands Elementary School last year with completion slated for this fall — except for Valley View, which is expected to be constructed in phases through 2027.

Over at the middle schools, Pleasanton Middle School celebrated the grand opening of its new synthetic track and field in the fall while Harvest Park and Hart middle schools also broke ground on identical field renovation projects.

As for Pleasanton’s two high schools, PUSD broke ground on the Foothill High School campus renovations project, which aims to build a new performing arts center and gym. Construction workers began tearing down locker rooms last summer and the $79.8 million project is expected to be fully completed during the first quarter of 2028.

For Amador Valley High School’s similar campus renovation project, which also looks to completely replace the school’s athletic and performing arts facilities, construction is expected to actually start this summer. The $101.5 million project is slated to finish in the second half of 2028.

PUSD also began demolishing Village High School, the district’s continuation school, this past January in order to make way for the new Educational Options Center, which will house Village, the Pleasanton Virtual Academy and the Adult Transition Program. The $47.4 Measure I funded project is slated for completion in the second half of 2027.

“All projects are slated to be done by 2030. All of them,” Mokashi said.

Most Popular

'Not just a grocery store': H Mart opens to eager crowd in Dublin March 26, 2026 4:26 pm

Pleasanton council shows early support for annexation, downtown plan, other priority projectsMarch 25, 2026 2:36 pm

Nighttime lane closures on I-580 near Pleasanton, I-680 through San Ramon ValleyMarch 25, 2026 2:05 pm