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Nearly 200 workers in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District could lose their jobs at the end of the current school year following a vote from the board of education this week to approve the layoffs that are one component of a broader budget cut package.
The board voted unanimously at its regular meeting Tuesday to approve eliminations and reductions totaling more than 129 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) spots for certificated employees and more than 60 FTE for classified employees.
The move came on the heels of the board’s approval last month of a $26 million spending reduction package that was scaled back from the initial $30 million-plus of budget cuts first proposed by Superintendent CJ Cammack alongside Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Danny Hillman in December – with the preparation of that package being one of the major tasks for the two administrators in their first year back at SRVUSD after stints in the same roles at the Fremont Unified School District.
Cammack has been blunt throughout the process that the budget cuts and layoffs are not “good for students” but are necessary nonetheless given the district’s dire financial circumstances and a commitment to the county office of education to reduce spending by at least $16.5 million starting in the next school year as part of the budgeting process for the current school year.
While the board’s approval signified their agreement with Cammack’s assessment, community members and the San Ramon Valley Education Association (SRVEA) have protested the layoffs to certificated staff – estimated by SRVEA President Laura Finco to make up nearly 10% of the union’s current membership – and urged the board and community to consider alternative solutions developed by SRVEA.
According to a document circulated by SRVEA leaders and protest organizers in the weeks ahead of the most recent board meeting, the teachers union’s “SRVEA Solutions” consisted of a “credible plan to increase revenue,” doubling cuts to management costs, a “credible early retirement plan to save money,” the use of discretionary block grants to fund student support jobs, and “monthly encumbered expenditure reports” to avoid further accounting errors.
All in all, the package was estimated by SRVEA to create at least $20 million in savings, but all of the proposed solutions were rejected by management during labor negotiations – leading the union’s council to vote in favor of filing an unfair practice charge against district management for bad faith bargaining “as management is refusing to bargain anything but approval of all their budget cuts,” according to the document from SRVEA.
SRVEA’s ongoing protests against the cuts continued into Tuesday night’s meeting, in which the layoff items ultimately made their way to the discussion nearly four hours after the start of the meeting at 6 p.m., and more than five hours after SRVEA leaders organized a protest that afternoon and evening starting at 4:30 p.m.
Julie Gilbert, a Spanish teacher at Iron Horse Middle School who is in her 26th year with the district, was among the five people who stuck around long enough to provide a public comment on the resolution to eliminate the more than 129 certificated positions just before 10 p.m. that evening.
“These budget cuts are devastating,” Gilbert said. “Right now I have 185 students. It’s very stressful. I try to do the best I can – I love my students. But this is hurtful. These cuts are hurtful for students. They’re hurtful for their mental health. Our kids need their mental health programs. They need the wellness center. They need their counselors. And when you are making these cuts, it is going to put the burden on the teachers – we’re not counselors. We’re not therapists. It’s too much.”
Even for those who aren’t among the nearly 200 employees set for layoffs by the end of the school year, Gilbert noted that the plans to increase class sizes starting in the next school year would mean additional work for those who remain, and who already have full plates as it stands.
“We already have huge class sizes, and I ask that you look at alternatives, because I do love this job, but it’s a lot,” Gilbert said. “It’s a lot on our plates right now as teachers, and kids have a lot of needs. We went through COVID, they have a lot of different needs, and we need all of those supports in place.”
“And we’re humans – we’re humans that have our own lives and everything and we give so much to our kids and to each other and the school community, but we need all those things,” she continued. “We need our teachers, we need our librarians, and we cannot put more students in our classroom. It’s unsafe. I know colleagues where there were injuries from students in their classroom – they got injured because they have huge class sizes.”
Gilbert noted that in her case, increased class sizes would mean more than 200 students starting next year, with all of the additional work in the classroom and outside that comes along with that including emails from students and conversations with parents and caregivers, and less time for one-on-one interactions with students.
“This is not sustainable for teachers, for students – we need a healthy environment for our kids,” Gilbert said. “We need them to feel safe when they come to school.
The district is set to be down by 3.8 FTE Spanish teachers starting next year, with cuts to foreign language teacher positions overall accounting for more than 7 of the 129 FTE positions that were axed that evening.
In addition to the teaching positions on the chopping block, teachers represented by SRVEA and other community members protesting the layoffs emphasized the harm that cuts to mental health services – including 20.7 counselor positions, five social worker positions, and one psychologist position – and two teacher librarian positions would have on students, particularly amid an uptick in mental health and other support required by students in the present day.
“Our job is impossible without the relationships we’ve built,” said Jessie Bailey, a teacher-librarian at California High School. “We’re being asked to re-envision what librarianship looks like after these cuts have gone through, and all I can envision is how hard it will be to sustain those relationships and the work we’ve done to create a comprehensive library program at Cal High with only 50% of our teaching staff. What our school has come to rely on will simply be impossible to maintain.”
“Our services will be used less and less, and everything we’ve worked so hard to build will be impossible to rebuild,” she continued. “I believe management has the capacity to make concessions that will keep the cuts away from our students.”
While much of the focus that evening was on cuts to student-facing positions represented by SRVEA, concerns also abounded over the more than 60 classified FTE positions set to be eliminated or reduced, including the district’s director of community relations, one budget analyst position, 10 custodian positions, and two audio visual technician positions.
AV worker Michael Sedgwick noted that if his position or others in the department are eliminated and their services are replaced by contractors, the district might not ultimately save any money – and that if the goal was to save money, the right step would be making better use of existing staff in the department.
“I would like to point out that we directly support the students, teachers and staff in the district,” Sedgwick said. “We provide equity and inclusion, safety and savings. Since we hear all about the students and saving money, if there’s any sites that want to save money, call your AV maintenance team. These do not include the security cameras, marquis, and most classrooms. We have security cameras by outside contractors that half of them need to be re-evaluated, moved, or refocused. This is a big waste of money. Any time you have to contract out, the students lose and the district loses big.”
Despite the pushback and various concerns raised, the board went on to approve both the classified and certificated cuts unanimously without further discussion in 4-0 votes on both items, with Area 4 trustee Susanna Ordway absent that night. The state’s deadline for preliminary pink slips is March 15.
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