Fifty-four positions were cut last year, but most of the affected teachers were reassigned to other positions and nearly all of the other jobs were vacant. But the savings weren’t enough to avoid further reductions, said Chief Business Officer Geraldo Castillo at the Wednesday meeting. Castillo began the job in October after the prior CBO resigned in the wake of pushback to proposed layoffs earlier this year.

If leaders don’t find a way to show that the district will have enough money for the next three years, it could fall into state receivership, which would remove the ability of trustees to make any decisions about the district and impose a state loan that would take decades to repay.

The trustees are set to vote on the proposed cuts Dec. 11. 

Special education

The equivalent of about 40 full-time special education aids and behaviorist positions could be eliminated as part of the proposal. Parents and educators of students in special education said reduced staffing would physically endanger their children and prevent the district from meeting its legal requirement to provide equal educational opportunity for all children, regardless of disability. 

“If you reduce support staff, you are putting students like my son in danger,” said Shalray George, whose son Elijah is nonverbal and has complex medical needs.

To justify the cuts to special education, district leaders cited a July 17 report from the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, a state-funded agency that provides financial advice to school districts. The report concluded that the district’s special education staff was far overstaffed for the district’s size and number of special ed students. 

Staff countered that PVUSD educates all students with disabilities within the district, whereas other districts, including 10 districts in north Santa Cruz County, send some students with severe disabilities to a county-run special education program with its own staffing. 

Even as enrollment has dropped, the number of students in special education has remained constant — around 3,000 since 2018, according to state data. Staff also cited rising rates of autism and ADHD in an area where pregnant mothers are often exposed to pesticides associated with those learning disabilities.

Yorbelid Zayas, who has four children in special education, asks the PVUSD Board of Trustees to reject proposed layoffs of special education staff.  ‘Every time a service is reduced, a child’s progress slows. Every time a program is cut, a family loses hope,’ she said. (Jesse Kathan — Santa Cruz Local)

Mental health

The cuts would also eliminate the equivalent of 15 full-time school counselors, and all 13 of its mental health clinicians. A less-expensive alternative could be to contract with outside nonprofits like Encompass Community Services and Pajaro Valley Prevention and Student Assistance for mental health counselors, said Superintendent Heather Contreras.

Those contracts could use restricted funds, money obtained through grants that cannot be used for staff salaries and benefits, to “ensure that we still have the same level of services for our students, but just in accomplishing those in a different way,” she said.

But staff said the contracted services would be less helpful to students than to counselors and clinicians embedded into the school campuses. 

“I believe deeply in access to care, but access only matters when it’s reachable, and for most teens, that means right in their second home, their school,” said Jessica Zovar, a mental health clinician at Watsonville High. 

Another mental health clinician in the district, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, told Santa Cruz Local contracted clinicians often have less training and “the result is fragmented care, transient relationships and limited support.”

PVUSD Superintendent Heather Contreras listens to public comment at a board meeting in October 2025. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local file)

Next steps

Multiple board members said that while the layoffs were painful, they would likely be necessary to keep the district financially viable. “We’re really limited in what we can do,” said Trustee Misty Navarro. “I wish that we had unlimited funds and we could do all things for all people, but we have to make really hard choices up here.”

Trustee Gabriel Medina differed, and said administrators must find “creative solutions” to raise money for staff salaries, such as requesting money from Driscoll’s and other agricultural companies as reparation for the harms of pesticides. “You guys are giving me just downers,” he told administrators. “I want solutions.”

The district must give out pink slips to employees that may be laid off by March 15, but some of those layoffs could be rescinded as the district learns what funding it will receive from the state.

Other options to avoid or reduce layoffs include increasing class sizes and reducing staff benefits, both of which would require negotiation with employee unions. The district could also consider closing schools, but the process would take a year. And to save a significant amount of money, multiple schools would need to be closed, Castillo said.

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