The Pajaro Valley Unified School District’s Dec. 11 school board meeting was truly dysfunctional, and represents an extreme deviation from sound governance based on community input.
The state of California gives school districts until March 15 to issue initial layoff notices. According to the California Federation of Teachers, voting for layoffs in December, rather than immediately in advance of the March deadline, is unprecedented in the state of California.
With the governor weeks away from presenting the state budget for next year, the move unnecessarily hurts students and teachers before a complete financial picture is available.
One of the most frustrating aspects of how this meeting unfolded is that it was all preventable, and seems like this was by design.
The agenda for that meeting was intentionally overloaded, and the board spent close to three hours doing their board reorganization, which previously was its own special board meeting.
Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers members sent hundreds of emails to the board asking them to postpone the vote on layoffs until January or February. Unfortunately these emails were ignored.
When the PVFT learned that the overflow room was not going to be available, we reached out directly to Superintendent Heather Contreras to ask for the layoff vote to be postponed or for the meeting to be moved to the Mello Center.
According to Dr. Contreras, “the board did not choose the Mello because the acoustics and the technology were very poor.”
Odd that the Mello Center has adequate acoustics and technology to host all of the amazing student performances we have each year, but is not sufficient for a board meeting.
From the beginning of this meeting, there was a police officer standing outside of the doors to the City Council Chambers refusing to let people enter the room. Some of these individuals had submitted to speak to items such as the approval of the agenda, and they were denied entry.
Carol Turley’s performance as board president was highly disturbing. The PVFT worked hard to get her elected, and she turned her back on our members and our students.
Beyond the District failing to move the meeting from the Mello Center and intentionally denying community members the opportunity to speak, Carol also interrupted public speakers (and board trustees), limited opportunities for public input, and ran the meeting with an iron fist.
We need trustees who will listen to the community and listen to facts. It is highly problematic to have trustees who view their job as to “support the superintendent,” especially when this district is not providing the community with the entire picture.
We know how to read a school budget, we know the historical trends of this district, we know our students, and yet this district disregards our knowledge and experience. Instead of respecting our community and our members, our district committed Brown Act Violation after Brown Act Violation and we now are calling into question the legitimacy of the decisions made during this meeting.
Clearing the board room and proceeding without any public input should be the absolute last resort, and only be taken when control of the board room truly can not be regained especially in
an important vote for layoffs.
In this instance, when a member of the community shouted out “blood on your hands,” a trustee perceived that a threat was made, so Carol announced that the room would be cleared and a five minute recess would take place.
The board should have had the police officers present conduct a threat assessment, and seeing as no threat was made, speakers should have been readmitted and allowed to speak.
What is worse than making this decision without any public input, the board made this decision without any deliberation. They cared more about getting home by their self-imposed midnight deadline than they cared about prioritizing our students.
We thank Trustee Dodge for voting no on these layoffs, and Trustee Medina for walking out on the vote.
The PVFT applauds the community, our union siblings, and our members for showing up in force to rally before the board meeting. It was truly inspiring to see 200+ individuals, taking up all four corners of the intersection, to demand that the district put students first. The rally was filled with so much love and positivity, illustrated that the community is opposed to these cuts and wants to see the District collaborate with their labor partners to find a better way to “balance our budget.”
This is only the beginning and the PVFT is going to keep fighting. We are going to pursue legal avenues to challenge the legitimacy of the decisions made during this meeting, and we demand that the board reconsider these layoffs to allow the public the opportunity to provide the input that we were denied by President Turley’s oppressive tactics.
We implore our members to keep fighting alongside each other in solidarity, because we have some big plans for 2026, and we all need to be fighting for our students.
