.png)
Officials warn that the district may forfeit its fiscal oversight to the County Board of Education if it cannot address its eye-watering deficit.
Following a 4-1 vote, the Santa Ana Unified School District will be moving forward with the layoffs of almost 300 faculty and staff members. It will also eliminate an additional 250 positions that are currently open and unstaffed. This action is an attempt to address the school district’s $187 million budget deficit, which—if not properly resolved—could result in the Orange County Department of Education assuming fiscal oversight of SAUSD.
That deficit is attributed to both a decline in enrollment and bad planning by previous school board members.
“It was bad fiscal decisions by the board in 2020 that has led us to this moment today,” SAUSD Board President Hector Bustos said during a recent meeting. “Now it’s time for all of us to look at our budget and really consider what we need to do to move forward in order to ensure that our students are not even gravely impacted years out.”
School districts throughout California have seen drastic declines in enrollment due largely in part to the poor performance of public schools and the growing popularity of educational alternatives, including private and charter schools. The state’s financial support for local school systems is based on both attendance and enrollment, so declines in both areas have a compounded financial impact. During the early 2020’s, many of these districts were able to stave off difficult conversations about budgetary problems thanks to COVID relief funds.
Now that this proverbial well has run dry, school officials can no longer avoid facing the direness of their poor financial positions.
Prior to the pandemic and the forced closure of schools—which the California Teachers Association fought to draw out as long as they could—SAUSD had a total of 47,000 enrolled students. Today, that number stands at 36,000. That’s a reduction of around 25%.
School board member Brenda Lebsack cast the sole dissenting vote regarding layoffs, attributing the sharp decline in enrollment partly to a shift from academics toward what she characterized as "political influence" in classrooms. Incidents that have occurred involving accusations of racism aimed at young students in the nearby Capistrano Unified School District as well as the San Diego Unified School District serve as examples of this alarming trend.
That sentiment is seemingly shared by former Santa Ana Unified School District board member Cecilia Iglesias, who in 2023 warned about the politicization of schools at the behest of public teachers unions.
“Unfortunately, many of California’s school districts and school boards are controlled by the state’s powerful teachers’ unions that put politics ahead of children,” said Iglesias. “Bringing change to our public schools will take time: time that many families don’t have when it comes to getting a good education for their children.”
On the topic of parental choice, she added that, “In California, school choice is about giving parents access to the best K-12 education options for their children and allowing parents to be in the driver’s seat of their child’s education. Now, more than ever, parents want choices… Our children have suffered for too long in district schools that spend more and more of our tax dollars while teaching less and less.”
Interestingly, opinions such as these made her the target of an expensive recall effort in 2020 wherein unions spent vast sums to have her removed from her seat on the Santa Ana City Council. While that effort succeeded, many of the problems Iglesias warned about still plague our public institutions.
And because of a failure to address those problems, hundreds of SAUSD employees will soon be out of a job.
Comments