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Pleasanton Unified School District is pausing plans for layoffs at Horizon Early Education Center and will most likely revisit the matter next month, officials told the Weekly on Monday.
Last Thursday, PUSD officials told the Weekly that the program — which has been running for more than 30 years, and offers reduced or subsidized services for qualifying families — “has been operating in the red for a number of years and is unfortunately not sustainable.”
The Board of Trustees was originally poised to cut six classified staff positions effective July 19 at the longtime daycare program last week, but opted to put the layoffs on hold and will now hear an updated presentation in late June instead.
Staff’s original recommendation called for eliminating five full-time early education positions at Horizon, including a lead early educator plus an early education aide. Adopting the recommendation would save the district approximately $470,000 based on staffing allocations, but parents who contacted the Weekly said they were opposed, particularly with the difficulty of finding daycare and more places reopening now.
In a joint letter to the district circulating online, PUSD families called it “disheartening to hear the program might be discontinued, as we are passionate about Horizon and its mission to provide early education services for the community and teen parents attending school in the district.”
The letter asks the district to “allow the community time to understand the merits of the proposal, offer constructive feedback, and propose alternative solutions,” and said that closing Horizon “would put many working families in the difficult position of unexpectedly finding alternative childcare in a very short time frame, especially given the scarcity of and high demand for high quality, licensed infant and toddler programs in the area.”
Next month’s presentation was requested by the board, according to PUSD spokesman Patrick Gannon.
“There’ll be lots of financial data as far as program cost and fees,” Gannon said. “We’ll also be gathering stakeholder input as part of the process.”
Though the layoffs status is still undetermined, officials said any employees that are let go would be eligible for re-employment with PUSD.
