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This past school year was a busy one for the Pleasanton Unified School District and its Board of Trustees.
Beyond maintaining regular operations and supporting academic success for students, a lot of work was done finalizing millions of dollars worth of budget reductions for this new school year, while other time was spent celebrating groundbreakings and ribbon-cutting ceremonies for facility improvement projects.
Before the 2026-27 school year got underway this week, Superintendent Maurice Ghysels sat down with the Pleasanton Weekly to discuss some of those key topics and how their impacts will be seen across the district.
Summer construction
Over the summer, PUSD and its construction contractors were busy tearing down buildings and setting the foundations for several projects funded by the $395 million Measure I bond that voters approved in 2022.
One of the more recent and most notable construction updates was the demolition of the Amador Valley High School theater, which started two weeks ago. The demo is part of the district’s larger ongoing campus renovation project, which is overseen by project designers and construction teams from Quattrocchi Kwok Architects, Gensler and Blach Construction.
The scope of the project includes demolishing the existing, theater in order to build a new performing arts center; modernizing the existing music building; remodeling the existing competition gym into a practice gym and locker rooms; tearing down the existing small gym; and constructing a new competition gym.
In addition to tearing down the nearly century-old Amador Theater, construction crews began tearing down the wrestling room and part of the small gym toward the end of summer break, and laying down the foundation for the rest of the project.
Another one of the marquee construction projects that made substantial progress this summer was a similar campus renovation at Foothill High School.
The project aims to build a dual athletic and performing arts facility and completely reimagine that central part of the school with a new pathway, improved lawn seating, a new synthetic turf field and other improvements.
Foothill’s renovation project first broke ground in summer 2025 with crews building interim housing for the affected programs and demolishing the locker rooms. This past summer, construction officially started on the foundations for the new theater and gymnasium.
PUSD also said the small gym was renovated this summer with new flooring, paint, lighting and “acoustical improvements”.
The last large-scale renovation project that has made significant headway over the past couple months is the construction of the district’s first-ever Educational Options Center.
Regarding all of these facility upgrades, Ghysels said the work is particularly important because the way schools look can make a big difference, not just for students but for all Pleasanton residents.
“Beauty matters when it comes to schools. It really does,” Ghysels said. “When you have students walking into edifices that are good looking, they feel good.”
Two of the district’s middle schools — Hart and Harvest Park — also saw the installation of new turf and synthetic field. Landscaping work is currently underway for each site, and both projects are expected to be complete this fall.
Over at the elementary schools, two sites saw the addition of new transitional kindergarten classrooms. Donlon now has three new TK classrooms and a new playground while Fairlands now has four new TK classrooms along with new playgrounds for TK and kindergarten students.
The district also started work on two new TK classrooms and made improvements to the parking lot at Walnut Grove this summer and continued its work on Valley View’s TK expansion project, which includes the construction of a new playground and garden that is all expected to be complete by the end of this year.
The last major update on construction projects is on the Alisal Elementary School modernization project. According to the district, the school — built in the 1950s — was last modernized almost 30 years ago.
The modernization project aims to update the aging and undersized core facilities, add limited capacity for potential future enrollment spikes and expand parking.
PUSD stated that design is currently underway and that the last major update was back in spring, when the district held several outreach meetings with the school community and the surrounding neighborhood to discuss traffic concerns and the desire not to change the existing barrier at Valley Avenue and Kolln Street.
Budget cuts, staff reductions
It’s no secret that PUSD has been struggling financially over the past few years.
Enrollment continues to decline as the district struggles to address a structural deficit – which is when expenditures cost more than what the district makes in revenue.
The structural deficit, combined with other financial challenges, has forced PUSD and the school board to make nearly $25 million in net budget reductions over the last three years, according to data provided by the district.
This past year, the school board underwent another contentious budget reduction process where the trustees initially approved $11.2 million in cuts for this 2026-27 school year. These cuts were largely made in response to the growing structural deficit and other financial challenges that resulted in the district’s budget being negatively certified by Alameda County.
Additional funding from the state, negotiations with employee unions and attrition of district office and management staff, however, helped bring the final amount of budget reductions that the district needs to make in the 2026-27 fiscal year to about $8.4 million, according to PUSD.
Throughout the budget reduction process, and over the summer, many teachers and classified employees felt a mix of emotions ranging from anger to anxiety.
“It’s definitely painful,” Evan Branning, president of the Association of Pleasanton Teachers, told the Weekly. “It’s really hard when you’re an educator or support staff and you hear from the district ‘We can cut your position or we can cut your category.'”
He said these last few years of budget cuts have taken a huge hit on morale across APT.
Ryan Kelly, the newest president of the Pleasanton Chapter 155 of the California School Employees Association that represents classified staff, also told the Weekly the latest round of cuts – which proportionately impacted classified employees more – took a really big toll on CSEA unit member morale.
She said classified employees continue to be one of the most impacted groups during budget cut discussions and a lot of them feel discouraged at the moment.
“It is very disheartening,” Kelly said. “A lot of our members have voiced strongly that classified members keep taking hits, we haven’t gotten a raise, we’re still paid 50% below surrounding districts … and yet, the consensus is we just keep giving.”
She even said a lot of classified employees — many with deep institutional knowledge — have been or are considering leaving because they can’t support their families and are finding out there is better work elsewhere.
And while several staff positions were removed from the proposed budget cuts thanks to additional funding realized, Branning said several teachers and specialists were left unaware of what their schedules were going to look like because their positions were reinstated after the last school year ended.
He also said the issue remains of how employees across the district will manage their work given all the positions that were cut.
“There’s definitely concerns about the positions from both APT and CSEA that have been cut and how we’re going to fill in the gaps there,” Branning said. “I’m hopeful that it won’t cause a major impact but … until we start the school year, we really don’t know what the impacts are going to look like.”
Both Branning and Kelly, however, noted that they and their unions will continue fighting for their members and remain hopeful that, through future negotiations, things will get better.
According to Ghysels, PUSD really focused its reductions on district office and management staff in order to keep any other cuts as far away from the classroom as possible.
“We’ve really reduced the administration,” Ghysels said. “If you go inside the district office now, it’s like a third empty.”
(Photo by Christian Trujano)
He said while it might seem easy for someone to say the district should cut more administrative positions, rather than teachers and other classified staff, admin staff is already at a place where they are doing more with less and if they cut further, they run the risk of not being able to do important work.
“You can reduce administration to the point where you start losing money,” Ghysels said, making the note that a lot of administrative staff work involves making sure the district is in compliance with local, state and federal regulations.
As far as staffing reductions, he also said the district “aligned staffing with declining enrollment”, which means it cut the number of employees down to reflect the number of students the district currently serves.
Looking ahead, Ghysels pointed out how the district’s financial outlook has somewhat improved, or at least improved vastly compared to how it was this time last year.
“I think we’re in a much better financial situation than we were last year,” Ghysels said.
PUSD received nearly $12 million in one-time money and $2 million in ongoing funding from the state, according to Ghysels.
During some of the past school board meetings, members of the public criticized the district for not using some of that one-time money to alleviate the stress of the budget cuts.
Branning said that money — at least some of it — should be used to benefit students right away.
“Current students deserve current dollars,” he said.
He also said that there didn’t seem to be any change to the district’s fiscal outlook after receiving this extra money.
However, Ghysels maintains that the district needs to be more frugal with how it spends that one-time money because spending those types of dollars on recurring expenditures is how PUSD got into its current financial situation.
“We have to be disciplined and say, ‘You can’t pay for ongoing expenditures without receiving ongoing revenue,'” Ghysels said.
Instead, he noted how the nearly $12 million in one-time funds helped the district restore its reserves. He also said if the district maintains course, it expects to move out of the negative certification back to positive by the first interim budget update toward the end of the year – assuming the economy and other variables don’t get in the way.
Ghysels also said one thing he’s particularly proud of is that despite the financial challenges last year, the district was able to use that experience to improve its business and financial systems for the future.
New sources of revenue
With PUSD being one of the lowest-funded districts per student across California, according to the district, Ghysels said that it’s important to assess all types of revenue-generating options so that they don’t have to go through this budget reduction process again in the future.
“We’ve really been on the offense with revenue,” Ghysels said.
One of the first things the district is doing to increase revenue is expanding its childcare options.
According to PUSD, the district’s Kids Club enrollment nearly doubled from 486 to 850 from 2022 to this past spring. Ghysels said now, PUSD’s capacity for the Kids Club is expected to reach over 1,000 students by this fall.
The club is expected to have generated over $2 million in revenue over 2025-26.
Ghysels said over the past year, the district has been listening to parents and found that most parents tend to choose the school districts and school sites based on daycare, which is why PUSD is trying to bridge that gap by bringing more daycare and childcare options to its schools.
“It’s really stressful to find childcare before and after school. It’s really expensive,” Ghysels said. “That benefit is just really attractive.”
He said PUSD has also been focusing on informing parents — particularly working parents — about how they can enroll their students a year early through its TK programs. He said through the district’s expanded childcare and extended-day programming, more families will get introduced to PUSD and will likely remain within the district, which means more revenue.
Ghysels said while the general public’s initial sentiment might be to ask why the district is building more TK classrooms while facing declining enrollment, having those classrooms will only strengthen the pipeline between parents seeking childcare options and looking to get their children enrolled early. Having the after-school programming located at the school sites will also help attract more families, according to the district.
“The younger you have kids in a longer day school, the better,” Ghysels said, adding that having more childcare particularly helps economically disadvantaged students perform better academically.
Another possible avenue for additional revenue that the district is currently looking into is leasing more space at the district headquarters on West Las Positas Boulevard now that PUSD has reduced a good portion of its staff there. Ghysels said the recent administrative reductions have resulted in two furnished suites totaling about 6,300 square feet being placed on the market.
PUSD currently has a tenant — Gatan Inc. — at those offices which generated over $1 million in lease revenue during the last fiscal year.
“We can bring in, if we rent it, up to $190,000,” Ghysels said in regard to the new leasing space in the district offices.
Finally, the district has been really focused on its “Raise the Base” advocacy efforts. Raise the Base is a statewide coalition that is asking state legislators to consider raising the base level of funding for public schools in California.
Ghysels said the district is really committed right now to advocating for more adequate and equitable state funding for schools like PUSD, which remain in the lowest decile of districts that receive state funding.
Last year he also hinted at the possibility of PUSD considering a parcel tax, but he said this year it’s ultimately a board decision. There are no discussions scheduled on the topic any time soon and there isn’t really a timeline for when the board might talk about the tax again, according to Ghysels.
Strategic Plan update
One of the other big projects that Ghysels and staff undertook before the school board went on its summer break was the adoption of a refreshed Strategic Plan.
According to PUSD, the Strategic Plan details the district’s “beliefs, vision, mission and strategic directions”.
Ghysels said the refresh was really about being proactive for the district’s future as the educational landscape continues to change.
From a post-pandemic change in student well-being where a lot more are feeling isolated, to artificial intelligence and other technology taking hold, Ghysels said the refreshed Strategic Plan helps by laying out a framework of what the district’s goals and beliefs are so that when staff have to deal with things like AI in the classroom, they have something to guide their discussions.
Specifically regarding AI, Ghysels said he understands the technology is here to stay, which is why discussions for how to deal with it should be led by teachers and students.
According to the plan, some of the district’s key priorities will be fostering a sense of belonging and well-being, identifying multiple pathways for student success, focusing on “rigorous, relevant learning”, responsibly using technology, and fostering more family and community partnerships.
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