Teachers and staff in Hayward are reeling after the city’s Board of Education voted Wednesday to cut up to 107 full-time positions in the Hayward Unified School District (HUSD). The layoffs are part of a fiscal solvency plan aimed at addressing HUSD’s $55 million budget deficit.
“It is a disservice to our students to eliminate these roles,” said Heidi Reid, a member of the Hayward Education Association.
Ongoing enrollment declines and the end of COVID-19 relief funding have created significant financial challenges for HUSD. District experts estimate that about 400,000 students, or roughly 6.3% of the state’s total, have left California since 2013. This has contributed to HUSD’s “negative certification” status, indicating the district cannot meet its financial obligations for the rest of the year.
The solvency plan emphasizes ‘minimizing impact to students’ and ‘prioritizing staff services over contracted services.’
The solvency plan emphasizes “minimizing impact to students” and “prioritizing staff services over contracted services.” However, with 90 percent of the district’s budget allocated to personnel, district leaders, including the superintendent and the Business Services Department, acknowledged that cutting key staff positions is inevitable.
The Board had until Feb. 28 to decide on the solvency plan to ensure employees slated for layoffs were notified by Mar. 15.
During an emotional public comment period, educators urged the board to reconsider. Francisca Montes, a teacher on special assignment (TOSA), argued for the importance of her role, which supports teachers in curriculum design, coaching and assisting students with homework.
“Removing TOSAs will mean less support for teachers, fewer resources for students and a great strain on our schools,” Montes said.
Some staff members will keep their jobs but will be asked to take furlough days. Elizabeth Carrera, a paraeducator, said she faces that prospect and worries about paying her bills.
“I find it very unfair to ask an employee who makes about $50,000 a year to take furlough days in comparison to a district manager who makes about $150,000 to $300,000 a year,” Carrera said.
Superintendent Jason Reimann sought to reassure attendees, saying the district would continue to seek contract adjustments to avoid further staff cuts. However, his remarks did little to ease concerns.
Board vice president Sara Prada fought back tears as she expressed her opposition to the solvency plan. A parent of an HUSD student, Prada said she joined the board to advocate for decisions that benefit students. She now says she feels disillusioned, with the final decision resting with the superintendent.
“I don’t have trust,” Prada said, sobbing. “What county oversights are going to make sure our kids are safe if we’re taking away the people that do?”
Board president Peter Bufete also became emotional before reluctantly approving the motion. He said he hopes to eventually rehire as many laid-off employees as possible but acknowledged it might not be feasible. Before voting “yes” on a decision that would impact lives across the district, he issued an apology.
“I always stood up and said that I care about how we make people feel,” Bufete said. “And I know this feeling can’t be good.”
Why cant the district just declare Bankruptcy, and therefore be forgiven in their spending and receive special funding from our countries educational funding?
These employees have families and responsibilities that are dependent upon their roles as school classroom leaders. Each teacher is a leader in our district.
Wouldn’t it be wiser to skim from the top and leave the classroom teacher’s out of this accounting fiasco?
For as often as our country sends up a space shuttle, which is quite often, we could redistribute some of this funding to the schools that are most impacted with budget crunches and help these financially impacted districts out.
No one seems to care about the smaller cities where all the sudden, and out of the blue, 107 educators and classroom leaders are dropped from payroll.
This seems like there needs to be a cost analysis investigation done and the entire spending of the district needs to be evaluated. Why would you hire all these teachers and all of the sudden need to use funds for classroom leaders as the first area to eliminate.
Just last month the district was advertising open vacancy positions for at least 75 different positions for teaching staff, and now within 1 month we are letting go 107 positions plus any of the new hires from 1 month ago.
How can we advertise that we need new classroom teachers when our district is in need of filing Bankruptcy? It seems like one end of the district is not being taken seriously.
When accountants speak the leaders of the district should be listening. But it seems like accountants are hired to crunch numbers, and yet when they might find an error in district spending it seems like they are not able to communicate this knowledge to prevent further gross spending.
I did also notice that our district has the nicest cars driven by top department leaders. I have never seen any other local district around with such privilege’s.
However, the classroom teacher’s and para’s are certainly not the ones driving around in these brand new cars. They go to work and lead humbly, without much complaint. They lead overcrowded classrooms, in older buildings that are nicely renovated and don’t have a clue that they are to be placed in line to be eliminated because they are too busy leading students and keeping them safe and academically preoccupied with positive facts and figures.
Now what will we do?