PUSD has made its own fiscal projection following governor Gavin Newsom’s announcement of the state’s $68 billion deficit: a district-wide $28 million shortfall.
Multiple factors have contributed to this deficit being the worst since the Great Recession in 2008, such as declining enrollment and attendance rates, as well as increased operating and maintenance costs. On a state level, a $14.3 billion reduction over the past three years to Proposition 98, a required minimum percentage of the state budget to be spent on K-12 education, has impacted the deficit significantly, along with the expiration of COVID-19 relief funding and scarce adjustments to the cost of living, despite increasing inflation rates.
In an ongoing battle for educational funds for schools across California, districts have been faced with difficult decisions for necessary reductions moving forward. Unlike actions taken by neighboring administrations, however, PUSD Interim Superintendent Greg Mizel has announced that these budget cuts will not include layoffs for any permanent employees for the upcoming 2024-2025 school year. Principal Ernie Remillard said that he is grateful for this guarantee.
“It’s great that they are prioritizing employees and are financially able to make cuts in other spaces so as to not impact our current teaching staff,” Remillard said. “They are trying to keep cuts as far away from classrooms as possible.”
PUSD specifically stated that their goal was to make adjustments in ways that would not directly affect students, according to Remillard.
“They want to make sure to keep the cuts away from the classroom and have the normal school settings remain [as] unchanged as possible,” Remillard said. “There will probably be more change at the district level, like decreasing departmental budgets, [with] the big focus being on giving students and teachers everything they need to run their classes for day-to-day use.”
Remillard, however, expressed concerns with the tentative and largely unpredictable nature of the budget distribution process and the lack of authority at a local level.
“One of the main challenges that I’m feeling, and as I can imagine most of my colleagues and fellow principals are as well, is not knowing,” he said. “We are still in a holding process since it’s mainly just discussion at the moment and few concrete updates. I’ve been communicating with our neighboring high schools and we all don’t know how the next year will play out. A lot of these decisions are going to be made at a higher level by the board and superintendents and they are really the ones making the ultimate calls on what to cut.”
Nonetheless, having experienced such turmoil before, Remillard has a positive outlook for the future.
“Schools will continue to move forward,” Remillard said. “Of course we are going to be making reductions and changes and it can be emotionally hard at times, especially in the ways it will impact employees and families. I’ve seen and witnessed it personally. But, as principals and as staff at Westview, we will just have to rework the budget and look at things in a new way so we can still provide the students with what they need.”
