When the Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees holds its first meeting in January, they will be faced with the first in what will likely be a long line of difficult decisions as a likely financial crisis looms.
At that Jan. 16 meeting, the district’s Sustainable Budget Team (SBT) will bring three separate recommendations of how to cut $5 million from the budget.
That money—Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds—came from the state during the Covid-19 pandemic to help school districts deal with the learning loss of not having in-person classes.
But those dollars are sunsetting this year, and PVUSD must now “right-size” after using the one-time funds to pay for ongoing expenses such as hiring new staff.
“PVUSD is facing a significant challenge due to declining enrollment and the loss of one-time pandemic funding,” said PVUSD Chief Business Officer Jenny Im. “To address this issue, we must re-prioritize and reimagine our services to scale effectively and maximize available resources.
“The focus,” Im said, “is to keep cuts away from the classroom and students.
“To achieve this, we must implement solutions with transparency, ultimately positioning our district for success in a sustainable manner,” she said.
District officials have not yet specified how many positions—or which ones—will be affected in any of the proposals.
Two options call for a $500,000 cut to the contract with Pajaro Valley Prevention and Student Assistance, while all would cut three full-time equivalent elementary academic coordinators—a position that is similar to an assistant principal—to right-size to declining enrollment.
All elementary school sites would still have an academic coordinator, but depending on the enrollment size, it may not be a full-time equivalent position. The majority of elementary schools have enrollments that decreased to under 500 students in the 2024-25 school year.
The 24-member SBT includes parents, labor partners, educators, classified employees, community partners and district leadership. The team met eight times between September and December.
Im says the cuts include mental health clinicians because the district invested in that area during the pandemic “to expand students’ access to social emotional learning, mental and health services.”
But with those funds going away, the district’s team of eight clinicians are worried about the impact it will have on the students who need it most.
In an interview with The Pajaronian, three of them—who asked not to be named because they are not represented by a union and are worried about repercussions from district administration—said that they were hopeful when the district hired eight mental health workers, as it signaled its willingness to support students.
Those students, they said, have many struggles other than the ones associated with Covid.
The SBT’s recommendations, they said, are “disheartening and heartbreaking.”
Many of the SBT members seemed hesitant to cut mental health services, and PVUSD Superintendent Heather Contreras pointed out that the Board of Trustees can accept any part of the SBT’s recommendations, or none at all.
But with a board that includes five new members, it’s unclear how the vote will go.
One clinician, while they found some comfort in the SBT’s support, said mental health clinicians are worried that all the proposals currently on the table require cutting eight mental health clinicians, the entirety of the district’s team.
That would have a dire impact on a student population, many of whom have built trusting relationships with the clinicians, he said.
Moreover, the team is also tasked with responding to serious incidents such as fights, he added.
“As mental health clinicians that work in the schools, we’re capable of building really deep and powerful relationships not only with our students but our staff as well,” the clinician said. “Literally any challenge that happens at a school, we’re involved in, a lot of the time.”
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