3 SLO parents launch campaign demanding millions from PG&E for local schools
San Luis Obispo parents packed local school board meetings earlier this year, rallying to save school counselors and the transitional kindergarten program as the district deliberated millions of dollars in budget cuts — but as cuts were finalized and deliberations ended, the public noise and attention to the district’s ongoing deficit petered out.
Or, so it seemed.
Three parents — Annie Aguiñiga Frew, Emily Goodman and Ben Lippert — have quietly maintained the momentum in their own time, spending their evenings doggedly researching, meeting with legislators and brainstorming ideas to secure funding for the school district that, they argue, is rightfully owed.
And now that the district is ramping up for another round of budget cuts, the trio is taking action.
Through their San Luis Coastal Parent Information Network, they’ve launched a letter-writing campaign in hopes of securing $7.5 million from PG&E to account for the district’s missing unitary tax income, previously generated by Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.
The campaign is just one of the ways the group hopes to advocate for kids and effect change in the local school system, without worrying about political or economic ties.
“We as parents can say and do things that the superintendent’s office cannot say and do,” Goodman told The Tribune in an interview with the three co-founders. “We’re saying, these are our kids. We are citizens and constituents in PG&E’s nuclear reactor zone, and these are our representatives. We’re more willing to take the risk, should there be any political downside.”
Parent group forms amid fallout of school budget cuts
Over the last year, Goodman, Lippert and Frew went from strangers who met at a school board meeting to partners in a major advocacy effort.
The three initially got involved when the district announced it was considering cutting transitional kindergarten— a suggestion that sparked outcry among many families.
Goodman, Lippert and Frew all have kids currently enrolled in transitional kindergarten, they told The Tribune.
The trio connected with each other and began digging into the details of school funding and legislation around Diablo Canyon, the SLO County nuclear power plant that was slated to close, culminating in a final payment from PG&E to the school district — except, the plant has continued to operate, this time without a unitary tax, leaving millions of dollars in county funding in limbo despite continued risks from nuclear operations.
For San Luis Coastal, which is funded by local property taxes as a basic aid district, the loss of the PG&E revenue has had significant impacts. The district cut jobs and services last year and pushed even more cuts to this upcoming budget cycle in hopes it could find a way to secure more funding.
Superintendent Eric Prater previously told The Tribune that the district is anticipating another $5 million in cuts this year on top of the $5 million made last year.
In their professional capacities, Goodman is a financial planner, Frew a political science lecturer at Cal Poly and Lippert has a background in environmental law and experience working in special education.
Those combined skills allowed the three to sift through the jargon and pare down the complicated funding and legislative topics to understand for themselves how the district ended up where it is.
After laying that groundwork, they decided to launch an advocacy group to share what they learned with other families.
The trio told The Tribune it can be difficult for local parents to find the time to get involved in politics — especially when the issues at hand are shrouded in layers of legislation and legalese.
“We can make government more accessible,” Frew told The Tribune. “We can make participation a little bit easier, and ease some of those burdens, because we’re all just trying to feel the sense of belonging here in this community, and we want a better life for our kids and for ourselves too.”
Lippert added that when it comes time to advocate for change in front of lawmakers, PG&E officials and district administrators, he wants parents to have the most accurate and up-to-date information to make their activism count.
“If we get a chance ... to be in a room with somebody, we need to know what we’re talking about,” he told The Tribune.
The group made it clear that they’re not interested in pushing for or against Diablo operations — in fact, they’re tired of their families being caught in the middle of pro- and anti-nuclear activism.
“Trying to tie any of this to extended operations of Diablo Canyon is really gross, to be honest,” Lippert told The Tribune. “That’s just not something that I, as a parent, think is acceptable — to use my kids as leverage in trying to extend operations or oppose extended operations.”
Goodman continued that thought: “And we’re getting used on both sides.”
According to its website, the San Luis Coastal Parent Information Network’s mission is to “promote community-driven advocacy and secure lasting investment in San Luis Coastal Unified School District.”
The website features pages with information on school funding, transitional kindergarten legislation and Diablo Canyon funding.
The group also has an Instagram and Facebook page.
Parents launch campaign to lobby PG&E for money
During district budget deliberations last school year, one subject of frustration resurfaced meeting after meeting — the loss of unitary tax payments from PG&E.
The district used to receive millions resulting from Diablo Canyon operations, paid out by PG&E. When the Diablo closure was approved, PG&E agreed to pay $85 million to the county, school district and other agencies to help cushion the financial blow.
But when Diablo Canyon was authorized to extend operations, there was no agreement to restart payments to the school district.
San Luis Coastal schools were slated to receive their final $4.6 million payment during the 2025-26 school year, The Tribune reported in January.
Now, the San Luis Coastal Parent Information Network is lobbying PG&E to contribute $7.5 million to the school district in place of the missing funding.
“The fact of the matter is, PG&E is not paying an appropriate amount of tax,” Goodman told The Tribune. “We could be positive at the district, we could have surplus, and it would still be an issue that PG&E, between 2026 and whenever they’re re-licensed, is not paying a proper amount of unitary tax.”
While PG&E doesn’t have a legal obligation to pay the district, the parent group argues it has a moral one.
“Our community has borne the burdens of having a nuclear facility, the last operating one in the state of California, for decades,” Frew said during the interview. “There’s a certain level of risk, and we all know that because we love this community, and we want to be here. We want to raise our families here.”
She continued: “But when industry comes in and is not a good neighbor in response, is really just extracting the resources, whether that’s economic or labor ... and they’re not being good neighbors in return, that’s like, I think just, at a fundamental level, is a main part of this.”
The group recently launched a campaign to send parent-written letters to PG&E CEO Patricia Poppe and state representatives asking for the money.
The group wrote a boilerplate letter for parents to personalize, and provided the contacts of PG&E officials and lawmakers on its website.
“As a parent and community member of San Luis Coastal Unified School District (SLCUSD), I am writing to insist that PG&E honor its longstanding commitment to our local schools and families by reinstating ongoing financial support,” the letter begins.
The letter states that PG&E has a “moral and civic duty” to contribute financially to the schools as long as Diablo Canyon remains in operation.
“We call on PG&E to commit $7.5 million annually to SLCUSD,” the letter reads. “This investment is not optional. It is the continuation of a shared responsibility to ensure local students benefit from the plant’s presence rather than pay the price for corporate accounting strategies.”
As of Friday morning, parents had sent 236 letters in a six-day period, Frew told The Tribune via email.
Will PG&E come to the table?
In response to Goodman’s letter to PG&E, spokesperson Eric Daniels wrote that the company has been in contact with the school district to discuss solutions.
However, he wrote that the only way to restore the unitary tax funding would be through legislation.
“We understand how deeply these issues impact students, families, and the broader community,” Daniels wrote in the email, which was obtained by The Tribune. “Please know that I, along with members of PG&E’s State Government Relations team, have met with District leaders and legislative staff to listen to and discuss SLCUSD’s concerns regarding the unitary tax once paid on Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) property assets.”
He continued: “It’s important to note that state legislation has outlined the process we must follow, and under current law, the only way to reinstate the unitary tax is through new legislation. PG&E remains committed to working collaboratively with stakeholders to explore equitable and appropriate solutions.”
Daniels said potential legislation would need approval from both chambers of the Legislature before hitting the governor’s desk. It would need to be signed before the end of the legislative session in August 2026, Daniels wrote.
“Again, PG&E has been in communication with the SLCUSD administration on several occasions surrounding this situation, and we stand ready for further discussions considering an equitable and appropriate legislative solution,” Daniels finished.
But for Lippert, Frew and Goodman, that response doesn’t cut it.
“SLCUSD parents asked PG&E CEO Patti Poppe to engage in a good faith conversation about the company’s ongoing responsibility to our students, parents, and community,” the group wrote in a statement to The Tribune.
“Instead, Eric Daniels sent hundreds of parents an off-topic, confused, and vague response about state legislation,” the statement continued. “His message exemplifies the dismissive stance PG&E has taken in what should be a collaborative process.”
The Tribune reached out to PG&E for further comment.
Spokesperson Lynsey Paulo wrote in an email that the company complies with tax laws and paid out $185 million to SLO County since 2018. She repeated the statement that reimplementing unitary tax requires legislative action.
According to Paulo, PG&E has a “long history of charitable contributions to education.”
“On average, PG&E and our employees provide hundreds of thousands of dollars in programmatic grants and charitable donations every year within San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties,” Paulo wrote.
“In 2024, PG&E made nearly 1,000 grants to nonprofit organizations and schools, totaling $36 million,” the email continued. “Our coworkers donated nearly $3 million themselves, as well as volunteered over 43,000 hours.”
Paulo attached a graph to the email showing some of the SLO County organizations that received donations in 2024, totaling $253,300. The list included education organizations like the Cuesta College Foundation and the Central Coast New Tech booster club, the graph showed.
The Tribune located the complete list of SLO County benefactors on PG&E’s giving website. Neither San Luis Coastal Unified School District nor the San Luis Coastal education foundation were listed.
Assistant superintendent of business services Ryan Pinkerton responded to The Tribune’s inquiry on Monday, describing the politics surrounding Diablo Canyon as “pretty ugly.”
According to Pinkerton, the district has been in contact with lawmakers and PG&E to try to develop a solution over the last year. The district also hired a lobbying firm to help with the effort, he said.
“PG&E’s response is that we need a legislative solution, but they have not shared what that would entail,” Pinkerton wrote to The Tribune in an email. “Their response has been that we should have made the reductions sooner.”
Pinkerton added that a legislative solution to add unitary tax back into PG&E’s obligations would put a burden on customers — meaning it’s not a politically attractive proposal.
“That would go to ratepayers and no one wants to put that forward (even if it means pennies to ratepayers),” Pinkerton wrote.
He also told The Tribune that the district’s efforts go beyond schools. The district has maintained that all county organizations that previously benefited from the unitary tax should continue receiving that funding while the plant is open.
“If it closes, so be it. But they should be paid while it remains open,” he said. “All of California and PG&E benefits from the power of Diablo Canyon.”
Pinkerton confirmed to The Tribune that the district could accept a donation from PG&E in place of unitary tax, which would not require a legislative solution.
This story was originally published November 9, 2025 at 11:00 AM.
CORRECTION: This article was updated to add comments from the San Luis Coastal Unified School District.
