Support Santa Rosa Teachers Association!
Santa Rosa City Schools is in a severe budget crisis, and the district is threatening to lay off 100 teachers and make drastic cuts. Please send letters to the Board of Education by Tuesday, Feb 10 and/or attend the board meeting on Wednesday, Feb 11 to support our teachers and staff. Letters can be brief (they will probably be skimmed and counted by board staff, not fully read by each board member). Focus on one or two points, use your own words; some background and suggested talking points are below. Our basic message is: keep cuts away from students!
Letters can be mailed to:
Santa Rosa City Schools Board of Education
110 Stony Point Road, Suite 210,
Santa Rosa, CA 95401-4118
or emailed to:
agendacomments@srcs.k12.ca.us
The School Board Meeting is on Wednesday, Feb 11 at the Santa Rosa High School Auditorium, 1235 Mendocino Ave, Santa Rosa (Next to the Junior College) at 6:00pm.
SRCS Budget Suggested Talking Points:
1. Teachers and staff are the most critical to educating & serving students, which is the purpose of our schools. The district is top-heavy with too many highly paid managers and expensive outside contractors and consultants. Any cuts should first focus on administrators, managers and contractors, who do not directly contribute to students’ learning.
2. Proposed teacher layoffs mean larger class sizes and less time for teachers to help individual students. These cuts will disproportionately impact those students who are already disadvantaged – low income, minority, immigrant and ESL students. This will deepen the academic disparity between those students who are already advantaged, and those who are not.
3. Reductions to school counselors means less support for students in crisis – including those dealing with anger or despair because of home or foster home conditions, living in fear of a parent being deported, struggling with mental health issues, or considering suicide. Reductions in special ed staff means less support for students dealing with dyslexia, ADHD, and other learning disabilities.
4. This crisis was created by the incompetence and recklessness of management; it’s both unfair and unethical to try to balance it on the backs of staff, who had no part in the fiscal mismanagement.
5. One of the main reasons for declining enrollment is students shifting to private schools. Reducing the quality of education through cuts and layoffs will only drive more students away, further reducing revenue and worsening the financial situation.
6. Cutting teacher pay (which is already below the state average) and increasing class size and workload may drive teachers to look for work in other districts, adding to the downward spiral.
7. Pay cuts and layoffs are anti-worker, anti-union, and anti-student. Hardworking teachers and staff are the backbone of our schools. They did nothing to create this problem; they should not be made to take the hit for management’s incompetence and fiscal irresponsibility.
8. Taxpayer funding of our schools is a ‘public trust’ – the school board’s job is to oversee those millions of dollars and make sure that they are not wasted or misused. Both district management and the board have failed in their duty and betrayed that trust, and they need to be held accountable for this crisis.
9. Undermining public schools – through mismanagement, cuts, and layoffs – plays directly into the right-wing narrative of ‘government inefficiency’ and their desire to privatize our school system for profit.
10. Education makes us better neighbors and citizens, and strengthens both our community and our local economy. Overcrowded classrooms and cuts to student services harms students and their families – as well as the wider community. We deserve better.
Background:
The district has a funding deficit of about $11 million dollars for current fiscal year (2025-26), and projects an increased shortfall of $17 million by next year, and $23 million in 2027-28. The district failed to follow basic budgeting procedures for a public agency, resulting in one of the worst fiscal ratings in the state. The budget omits specifics and lacks transparency; problems were minimized or ignored until they reached the current crisis level.
District management knew this was coming; they actually warned the teachers union during past contract negotiations of the looming shortfall, yet failed to take any meaningful action. Now they are threatening to lay off more than 100 teachers (out of 900 total), as well as many other staff, and to cut essential programs that students depend on.
This financial crisis has been developing for several years, but former superintendent Daisy Morales ignored the warning signs, badly mismanaged the budget, and took actions which made it even worse.
Last April she was replaced by Lisa August, who had been Deputy Superintendent of Business Services – typically in charge of preparing and monitoring the annual budget, managing cash flow, overseeing accounting, payroll, and purchasing, and conducting audits. In other words, they replaced Morales with the one person who may be even more responsible for this crisis. Both Morales and August have acted with profound incompetence and reckless disregard for fiscal responsibility, and should have been fired by the district, rather than retained or promoted.