In a Feb. 11, 2025, briefing, Pajaro Valley Unified School District Superintendent Heather Contreras laid out the issue.

Contreras said that when she was hired last March, she was well aware of two major challenges the district faced: The ending of one-time COVID-19 funding and a steep drop in student enrollment, a trend facing most school districts in a demographically aging Santa Cruz County that has become unaffordable for many young families.

“I don’t know that I understood the scope” of the challenges, she said, and reviewed how a 24-person volunteer budget committee had worked to come up with a plan that included proposed staffing cuts.

The budget resolutions, one for classified employees and another for certificated employees, called for the board to reduce 80.8 full-time equivalent teachers and 19.75 classified employees for the 2025-26 academic year. The biggest cuts proposed on the certificated side included 12 elementary release teachers, eight elementary intervention teachers, six counselors, four high school career technical education teachers and a visual and performing arts coordinator.

By a 4-3 vote, the Board of Trustees, however, voted to reject the resolutions.

The much smaller Live Oak School District earlier this month faced a somewhat similar situation. Prodded, to put it mildly, by the County Office of Education, the district’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved a plan to reduce spending by $1.9 million to help solve the district’s financial deficit and refill depleted reserves. The reductions included nearly $1.2 million in staffing cuts — the equivalent of 26.1 full-time certificated and classified employees in the coming fiscal year. The reality of the budget reserves essentially left trustees with no choice.

Not so at PVUSD, where the district has about $56 million in reserves, more than it’s required to maintain, and can draw these down in the short term to deal with budget issues. In addition, retirements and other staffing attrition should, if these positions are not rehired, help close funding gaps.

But the four trustees — Jessica Carrasco, Daniel Dodge Jr., Joy Flynn and Gabriel Medina (only Dodge was a holdover from the previous board, the other three were elected in November) — who voted down the budget cutting resolutions have set up an awkwardly adversarial relationship with the district administration. No doubt they were influenced by the organized opposition to the cuts who staged protest rallies in Watsonville before the meeting last week.

After the vote, Contreras said the district will explore potential next steps, including reconsidering budget adjustments, scheduling a special board meeting and identifying other cost-saving measures prior to the March 15 notification deadline when layoff notices for district employees would have to be sent out.

There’s also a major question about future federal funding with the Trump administration seemingly intent on closing the federal Department of Education. PVUSD, which serves a community where a high percentage of families are lower income and qualify for financial help, could feel this loss more than other districts in the county.

What Contreras didn’t say was that with their vote, the four trustees have just kicked the proverbial budget can down the road. Yes, the district can spend down reserves, which is a dubious long-term financial strategy, but the greater issue is that PVUSD enrollment has dropped about 18% in recent years, or about 3,000 students over the last decade, and is still declining. Approximately 65% of the district’s state funding is based on enrollment.

With declining enrollment, tough decisions likely will be coming down the road about closing schools (the PVUSD includes 35 schools), and the community opposition also is likely to be intense when such proposals are made.

Still, there are two redeeming factors: The community showed again how deeply it cares about schools and, vacated school sites that potentially could be used for teacher housing, since the $315 million school bond passed by voters in November includes provisions for workforce housing.