The Santa Barbara Unified School District voted Tuesday night to send layoff notices to 66 employees, including those in teaching and administrative positions.
The reductions would save the district about $6.87 million — about $5.2 million from employee cuts and an additional $1.67 million in consultant contracts.
The positions include 10 elementary school instructors, 10 secondary school instructors, an elementary school assistant principal and other support specialists in various areas.
The positions classified for reduction range from curriculum specialists and a custodian to administrative secretaries and support technicians.
Ed Zuchelli, spokesman for the school district, said the number of positions being eliminated could be up to 66 but the number of employees who actually receive the layoff slips will be much lower due to the retirement incentives and, attrition.
Members of the public who spoke Tuesday night urged the board to find other ways to cut costs.
“The plan you are presenting us with is asking classrooms and students to bear the brunt,” said Michele Voigt, a parent of two San Marcos High School students. “These layoff notices themselves create instability. They disrupt classrooms. They scare families, and they damage morale.”
Voigt pointed out that enrollment has dropped by 10% since 2019 while executive pay for district cabinet members has grown.
“This raises serious questions about our fiscal priorities,” Voigt said.
She urged the district to look at the employee reductions as more than just “notices.” The instability, she said, costs the district great teachers and hurts students.
“My kids are impacted every day worrying if their teacher is going to stick with them or if they are not,” Voigt said. “They have gone through this year after year.”
The full extent of the layoffs would be a worst-case scenario, but the district is required by state law to send notices of potential “reductions in force” by March 14. The district may reduce the number of notices after the state’s budget is revised in May.
“Even though they are preliminary, it has a devastating emotional and psychological effect on those who receive them,” teacher Joel Block said. “This board should do the right thing and not vote on this tonight, and at a minimum, require district staff to give you more information and ways the budget can be cut other than this.”
The meeting was highlighted by a tense exchange between board members Gabe Escobedo and Celeste Kafri. Kafri did not want to approve the layoffs, and instead requested staff to present other options so the board could vote at a future meeting. She also expressed concern about the timing of the vote, which was late into the night.
“We cannot make a decision like this at 10 p.m.,” Kafri said. “We know that these RIFS really impact people’s lives.”
Kafri said the meeting began in closed session at 4:30 p.m.
“You can hear from the other board members that they are not thinking as clearly,” Kafri said. “It is 10 p.m. We are not giving ourselves time to understand the impact of these RIFS on our students.”
She said that after being in a meeting for nearly six hours, “at this point, I am fried, to be frank.”
“You don’t want a surgeon operating on you in the 25th hour,” Kafri said.
Escobedo took exception to Kafri’s comments.
“I am so tired of pretending like there’s not prep for these meetings,” he said. “We can’t as a board continue to just pretend like we come here and we are hearing it from staff for the very first time at the podium. We are not. We are thinking about things. We are meeting with staff. It is not as though this is the first time we are hearing it or seeing it. “
While Escobedo was speaking, Kafri raised her hand to respond, and Escobedo said, “We know you are going to rebut.”
Kafri did. She noted that there was no community input on the matter prior to Tuesday night’s discussion. Although board members received a one-hour presentation from the finance director in a one-on-one meeting, the public learned of the reduction in force notices just last Friday.
“Last year, we had two meetings where we talked about reductions in force,” Kafri said. “One was a discussion item, and the other was an action item. This year, we only had an action item.”
Kafri said “I am not pretending,” adding that the public’s not having enough time was “a real concern.”
She was the sole vote in opposition to the motion, which passed 4-1.
