SLO school district cuts $5 million over objections from parents, kids
The San Luis Coastal school board approved more than $5 million in prospective budget cuts Tuesday night, despite vocal opposition from parents and students to some of the proposals.
The majority of the cuts — more than $4.1 million worth — are set to affect jobs including teachers, classroom aides, counselors and more. The remainder won’t affect staff, but some at Tuesday night’s meeting worried that cuts to programming, specifically a $100,000 loss for the music program, could harm students.
While the district’s budget won’t be solidified until next year, the board took up the prospective cuts Tuesday night to avoid raising a red flag regarding its reserves, officials reported during the board meeting.
The district is required to maintain 3% in reserves for a rainy day, and dipping below that level would put it at risk of being taken over by the state, assistant superintendent of business services Ryan Pinkerton said.
A letter shared with the district by county schools Superintendent Jim Brescia indicated that the district needed to take action to remedy the situation at its first interim budget report, which occurred Tuesday night.
Unless additional funding sources are secured by spring, the cuts will likely mean layoffs and changes to services, affecting students across school sites.
District leaders say deficit is a ‘revenue problem’
Superintendent Eric Prater told a packed house at Tuesday’s meeting that the district’s structural budget deficit — set to result in more than $10 million in reductions over three years — is largely a revenue issue.
This $5.07 million reduction will be the second round of big cuts, following a $4.7 million reduction earlier this year and another $652,000 the previous year. For the last two years of budget deliberations, Prater has emphasized the storm of financial barriers that have limited the district’s budget.
Those include the loss of unitary tax payments due to the depreciation of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, the expiration of COVID-19 relief dollars and the fact that basic aid districts like San Luis Coastal were carved out of state funding for transitional kindergarten, which Prater said Tuesday is the “most expensive program in all grade levels.”
Basic aid districts are funded largely through local property taxes because their local revenue exceeds what they would receive under the state’s school funding formula.
If PG&E payments were reinstated at their previous levels and transitional kindergarten funding was provided to San Luis Coastal, it would amount to about $15 million in additional revenue annually, Prater said.
“I’m here tonight to tell you we have been backed into the wall,” Prater told the audience. “We’re going to make these reductions because we have to.”
The district has undertaken efforts to try to pass legislation that would change its circumstances.
Last year, Assemblymember Dawn Addis introduced a bill that would have provided transitional kindergarten funding to basic aid districts, but the bill was killed in committee. About 15% of California’s school districts are basic aid, according to 2025 fact-sheet from the Public Policy Institute of California.
As for PG&E, district officials and community members have advocated that the company should continue to pay its share of unitary tax despite no legal requirement to do so. The San Luis Coastal Parent Information Network launched a letter-writing campaign, issuing demands to PG&E from hundreds of community members.
PG&E responded to many of those parents that legislation would be required to reinstate the funding. The company could provide a donation to the schools until legislation is passed, district officials previously told The Tribune, but it has provided no indication that will happen.
Sen. John Laird told The Tribune on Wednesday that he is pursuing a path toward restoring the unitary tax for SLO County agencies but is unsure at this point what that path will look like.
“My staff and I are now working with the Board of Equalization, and we’ve contacted the Governor’s Office, and we have done some work with PG&E, and we’re trying to find a path,” Laird said.
To the district and it’s patrons, Laird said: “I am pursuing this. I am committed to finding a path, and I’m working on it.”
Students, parents show up in support of school staff, programs
Tuesday’s meeting drew a large crowd to oppose the budget proposals, resulting in around five hours of budget-related public comment, presentations and discussion.
A large chunk of attendees arrived in support of the district’s music programs, band and choir. Students in band uniforms, parents and music boosters dotted the crowd.
The district originally suggested a $150,000 cut to music programs but reduced that to $100,000, leaving $50,000 remaining for instrument repair and other costs.
Pinkerton, the assistant superintend, previously told The Tribune over email that the $50,000 would be split between the school sites and represented the majority of district-allocated funding — excluding staff salaries, site-allocated funding and money from Proposition 28, the 2022 ballot measure that provided additional arts funding for public schools.
The district did not intend to reduce any music classes or lay off any music teachers. Pinkerton said officials would work with school sites to ensure needs were met.
However, parents and students who showed up Tuesday night told leaders the program already struggles with the budget it has and urged them against the cuts.
“The district’s footnote that it will work to ensure needs are met is not reassuring,” said Maeve Holden, who previously spoke with The Tribune about the proposed cuts. “You cannot ensure needs are met while simultaneously stripping the funding required to meet them.”
A slew of band students also showed up at the meeting.
One student, who identified himself as a saxophone section leader at SLO High School, said band has been “the most enriching, impactful and educational experience I’ve ever received for my time in this district.”
But, he said, the musicians he oversees in his section struggle with instruments that are broken, old and worn down.
“It has happened multiple times where I’m leading a sectional and a student’s horn falls apart in their hands,” he said. “When this happens, I can either try to fix it myself with carpenter’s tape, which often happens, or we send it to be repaired, oftentimes leaving a student without an instrument for weeks.”
Band students also shared social media posts in support of their program.
This, and other claims of broken and old instruments, came as a surprise to board members and district officials who believed the $150,000 budget was a sinking fund for instrument repair after more than $1 million was allocated to purchase instruments years ago.
“We need to dig into inventories and the reality of what’s happening with kids,” Pinkerton said. “If they truly are falling apart as we heard tonight, yeah, we have some major issues that we need to address, right?”
Tension brewed between the audience and the board and district officials as the meeting continued.
During board discussion, board member Marilyn Rodger appeared to allege that there may have been an effort to “frighten kids into thinking we weren’t going to have band” — a claim that caused an eruption in the crowd and a back-and-forth between Rodger and the audience, a livestream of the meeting showed.
As trustees continued to discuss the cuts, they also referred to the non-band cuts to counselors, intervention specialists and teachers that would inevitably impact classrooms.
Several people also showed up to urge the board against cuts that could impact English learners, with one parent bringing a petition for PG&E that she said through a translator was signed by more than 200 parents.
Several attendees also called the district out for not including any administrative reductions on this round of budget cuts. The district responded that it has the lowest student-to-administrator ratio compared to its peers in the county and that it made administrative reductions during the first round of budget cuts in 2023.
Ultimately, the board voted 6-1 to approve the budget cuts as outlined during Tuesday night’s meeting. Trustee Robert Banfield cast the lone vote against approving the cuts.
Banfield is a musician and said he teaches piano to both adults and children. He told the audience he won’t be running for re-election next year and intends on this being his last season deliberating the cuts.
“I cannot turn my back on what I love,” he said.
Trustees and district leaders indicated during the meeting they do not intend to allow the approved cuts to devastate any district music program.
This story was originally published December 17, 2025 at 3:33 PM with the headline "SLO school district cuts $5 million over objections from parents, kids."
