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‘Painful’ Staff Layoffs Looming within Pasadena Unified School District
Education Feb 13, 2018
The campaign is aimed to help students miss less than five days of the school year. – Courtesy photo
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The fiscal stabilization plan will eliminate over 100 FTEs from the 2018-19 school site budget, including 63 classroom teachers. – Courtesy photo
PUSD Board Approves Fiscal Stabilization Plan in Wake of LACOE Concerns
By Gus Herrera
Last week, the Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) Board of Education responded to county threats of potential insolvency by approving a fiscal stabilization plan that will restore the district’s required three percent reserves.
The plan, approved by a vote of 5-1 (Board Member Kimberly Kenne in opposition), will look to make approximately $6.9 million worth of budget reductions for FY2017-18 and approximately $14.2 million for FY2018-19, according to PUSD staff’s report.
The reductions, which will impact all school sites and the district’s central office, will include a combination of staff layoffs, program reductions/eliminations, and budget re-structuring.
For the PUSD, these financial difficulties have been dawning at the horizon for quite some time now. When the board unanimously approved the district budget last summer – a budget described as “very, very tight” by Chief Business Officer Bernadette Griggs during the June 22, 2017 board meeting – Superintendent Brian McDonald predicted that the upcoming budget reduction process was “going to be painful” and that some decisions would “not be popular.”
Similarly, before the new year, Board Member Scott Phelps penned an opinion piece for Pasadena Now where he begins, “the PUSD’s budget is not doing well.”
Phelps went on to cite a combination of factors that have driven the district’s fiscal circumstances into a “new reality” – decreased revenues, student enrollment, and a lack of “significant increase in state funding” have all contributed to the PUSD’s budget woes.
According to the district’s first interim report, PUSD’s average daily attendance is projected to decline by 317 students over two years, a two percent decrease.
The gravity of the situation was only heightened when Candi Clark, chief financial officer for the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE), sent a letter to PUSD Board President Roy Boulghourjian on Jan. 19 urging the school district to take immediate action to restore its required minimum reserves for economic uncertainties.
Clark ordered the PUSD to adopt a fiscal stabilization plan “no later than Feb. 26” and also revealed that the LACOE would be “placing a fiscal expert at the district at the expense of the county office, to assist in the development and implementation of the plan.”
The letter, which described the PUSD as being in “immediate risk of becoming insolvent,” cited projected operating deficits of $11.9 million for 2017-18, $21.2 million for 2018-19, and $23.9 million for 2019-20.
It did not take long for the district to respond – on Feb. 1, the PUSD board held a special meeting to discuss a draft for a fiscal stabilization plan. Four days later, on Feb. 5, Superintendent McDonald wrote an open letter to the PUSD community to provide an update on the efforts to chip away at the budget deficit and outline the district’s intent to ultimately approve the aforementioned fiscal stabilization plan.
The plan, which was approved on Feb. 8, was crafted with a “worst case scenario” in mind, according to PUSD staff’s report, and will eliminate a total of 109.5 full time equivalent (FTE) positions from the FY2018-19 budget ($11.7 million worth of estimated savings).
Most notably, reductions will include the elimination of 63 FTE classroom teachers – a move set to save the district an estimated $6.8 million, according to staff’s report.
It is important to note that Superintendent McDonald said the list of cuts is “not final” and changes might be made as the process plays out. Mcdonald supported the move to adopt the fiscal stabilization plan as it is a priority to send the “right message” to LACOE that the PUSD is indeed taking action.
The PUSD board will meet again on Feb. 15, when they will hold a special joint meeting with the Pasadena City Council.
