DISTRICT LAYOFFS LOOM AS AID EXPIRES

Pandemic funds used to hire some at San Marcos Unified running out

Despite receiving $60 million in COVID aid and increased levels of state school funding, San Marcos Unified School District may lay off scores of teachers and other school staff.

The district recently announced it may cut up to 97 teaching positions, 63 other school staff positions, and six assistant principal positions to fix a $10 million budget shortfall that is anticipated for the upcoming school year.

That’s on top of another 50 teachers on temporary contracts who may also be cut, according to the teachers union.

The district currently has about 1,080 teaching positions total.

The news of potential layoffs has caused worry and controversy in the North County district, which serves about 19,800 students, almost half of whom are Latino and a third of whom are socioeconomically disadvantaged.

Most of the educators who were slated for potential layoffs earlier this month were elementary teachers. The group also includes 21 middle and high school teachers, five counselors, eight social workers, six special education teachers and one school nurse.

District officials say, however, that likely far fewer people will actually be cut, partly thanks to more than 30 teachers who are taking the district’s early retirement incentive.

State law requires districts to send pink slips by March 15 to any employees it may need to cut for the next school year, but districts can rescind layoff notices until May 15 and rehire laid-off employees after that.

Regardless, just knowing that there may be layoffs has hurt teacher and staff morale, on top of the other stresses school employees have dealt with in recent months due to the pandemic.

“I’m telling anyone who got the (layoff notice) to go seek a job elsewhere,” said Dale Pluciennik, presi

dent of the San Marcos teachers union. “There’s a teacher shortage. Any of these people who want to find another job, they will.”

San Marcos has had a structural budget deficit since 2017, and the district has avoided making budget cuts needed to fix it. As a result, the district’s deficit continued to grow, leading to the district’s need now to make a batch of layoffs.

Officials said they believe this is the largest reduction of staff the district has had.

“This is an unfortunate fork in the road, if you will,” said Henry Voros, the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources, at a recent board meeting. “I’d like to say that’s something that is new to the district, but it has been a pattern quite frankly in our district for a number of years.”

San Marcos is the only district in San Diego County that has placed itself on the state’s watch list of financially at-risk districts twice this school year. The district has been on the state watch list since December 2020.

School budget experts regularly warn school districts that they need to cut costs to right-size their budgets each year, especially as declining enrollment threatens to shrink districts’ revenues.

“Those hard decisions have just been postponed and put off, hoping that the state would come through with additional funding,” said Erin Garcia, who became San Marcos’ assistant superintendent of business six months ago. “If you don’t address them, those deficits tend to compound over time.”

The district lost 1,100 students, or 5 percent of enrollment, in the first year of the pandemic. In December the district estimated that, both because of lower enrollment and low attendance due to COVID, it would lose $17 million of revenue in the next school year. That’s because state funding for schools is based on enrollment and attendance.

Garcia added that San Marcos doesn’t get as much state funding per student as other nearby districts like Oceanside and Vista because it does not meet a state threshold of disadvantaged students that gives districts a higher rate of funding. About 40 percent of San Marcos students are low-income, foster, homeless, or English-learner students, while the state gives significantly more money per student in those categories for districts with 55 percent or more.

San Marcos is also an early example of what lies ahead for school districts as COVID aid dollars run out.

More than half of the teachers on the chopping block, including intervention teachers, counselors and social workers, were hired using one-time pandemic aid. From the beginning, they were never meant to stay at the district forever.

Public schools have received a wealth of federal and state dollars to address COVID and learning loss resulting from school closures. But the money was always intended to be one-time, meaning schools could not rely on it to hire and keep staff forever, even though schools say they need and want to keep the new staff.

San Marcos got about $62 million in COVID funds, of which it has spent about half, Garcia said.

The district used COVID and learning loss money to hire more custodians, social workers, counselors, intervention teachers, campus supervisors and contact tracers, Garcia said. It also increased health aides’ hours from part time to full time.

The district issued notices to all staff hired using state aid meant to address learning loss, even though that money doesn’t expire until June 2024. Garcia said the district is figuring out how many staff it can keep next year, but she anticipates many will be gone starting next school year.

Teachers and staff are protesting the potential layoffs. Pluciennik said he worries they will cause class sizes to increase. The layoffs also mean that physical education teachers will be reduced from full-time to part-time status.

Pluciennik said he thinks the district issued too many layoff notices and the district instead should have cut central office staff to keep the reductions away from the classroom.

Some staff members said it will be difficult for schools to pick up the work left behind by eliminated employees. Yvonne Brett, a librarian at San Marcos High, said at a recent board meeting that even with all of her campus’ custodians, students have to help pick up trash on campus and custodians have come in to work extra on weekends.

“These layoffs are destroying the little scrap of morale that is left for all our classified employees after two years of working their own jobs, plus a variety of additional duties through these very unsettling times,” Brett said.

San Marcos will have enough staff for schools after layoffs, according to the district’s analysis, Garcia said. The district’s declining enrollment means it doesn’t need as many teachers and staff, she said.