Paso Robles schools may lay off workers in budget crisis. What jobs are on chopping block?
Around 5% of jobs in the Paso Robles school district could be cut as officials attempt to remedy a $4.9 million structural budget deficit.
The announcement came during a budget presentation to school board trustees Tuesday night, when district administrators outlined a plan to eliminate around 50 positions districtwide, including management and classroom roles.
The proposed plan is preliminary and has not yet been voted on by trustees.
The district’s deficit is fueled by declining enrollment and the expiration of COVID relief funds.
Administrators said their aim is to be “hard on the problem, but soft on people.”
“The content of this presentation is — it’s weighing heavily on my heart,” said district superintendent Jennifer Loftus. “Our structural budget deficit is significant and as we have discussed many different times, there’s no way to make the kinds of reductions we need without impacting people.”
The school board previously approved a retirement incentive program that resulted in several early retirements, making a significant dent in the job cuts that the board will later have to approve.
The district is also opting not to fill several open vacancies to attempt to prevent the elimination of classroom staff.
Even with those efforts to keep reductions out of classrooms, the cuts will still have impacts.
“At the end of the day, this is going to impact our students,” Loftus said. “We will be impacting or reducing services to students and families. We don’t want to walk past that without acknowledging it.”
Paso Robles is not the only district facing budget woes.
Layoffs could also hit the San Luis Coastal district as it wrangles with a multimillion-dollar deficit.
It recently proposed cutting its transitional kindergarten program, garnering widespread criticism from district parents and educators before officials rescinded the proposal.
Teachers and paraeducators could see layoffs
Officials broke down the potential cuts into certificated, classified and management categories.
Certificated positions are roles that require certifications, like classroom teachers and counselors. Classified positions include non-teaching support staff like aides, secretaries and custodians. Management includes administrative positions.
According to the presentation, the district will consider eliminating at least 18.5 certificated positions, including seven teachers at Lewis Flamson Junior High School and 3.5 teachers at Paso Robles High School.
Two at each campus would be eliminated through attrition rather than layoffs after four people elected to retire.
Certificated reductions could also include two counselors, two special education teachers, an English language development teacher and a teacher on special assignment. The district may eliminate or reassign 12 positions through a reconfiguration of its math intervention and sixth grade elective models.
Another 22.6 classified positions are on the chopping block, including clerks, library technicians, paraeducators and family advocates.
The certificated staff reductions would amount to a 4.85% cut and $2.4 million in savings, while the classified cuts would represent a 5.55% cut and $1.7 million in savings.
Six management positions could also be eliminated — a 7.06% cut, amounting to $772,000 saved.
A significant fraction of the jobs on the chopping block would be eliminated through attrition rather than layoffs, the district noted. Some positions would be vacated by retirees, and others are current vacancies that the district would opt not to fill.
And some jobs would be reconfigured rather than eliminated, to ensure students could receive the same services with lower staffing levels.
The specifics of the teaching positions in danger had not been established as of Tuesday.
Officials said the district needed to evaluate the enrollment schedule to determine which classes had the highest demand and which could be cut with the smallest impact to students.
Community defends agriculture programs
While trustees did not take action on the cuts Tuesday night, community members showed up to advocate for their schools — specifically their agriculture programs.
High school agriculture teacher and mom Theresa Clark detailed the agriculture department’s successes, including achievements at the state level and local philanthropy.
“I urge this school board and district to continue to support the growth of this organization as well as our department,” Clark said.
Amanda Gardner, another high school agriculture teacher and mom, echoed Clark’s statements.
“Maintaining staff and resources in the agricultural department is not just a matter of preserving a program,” she said, “it is an investment into our students future, our economy and our community.”
Cuts to district agriculture programs were not discussed by the board Tuesday night.
This story was originally published January 30, 2025 at 10:00 AM.
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