Santa Ana schools may be the only ones in the State that are honest. In March they announced they did not have the money for the staff and teachers already hired. Most districts stole money from reserves, manipulated the books or lied, and kept staff they can not afford. At least Santa Ana is doing the right thing.
“Classrooms in the Santa Ana Unified School District are expected to get a little more crowded next semester as 262 employees are getting laid off while officials grapple with declining enrollment and a $154 million budget deficit.
Officials say they’ve tried shuffling some employees over to other positions to reduce layoffs.
Santa Ana Unified School Board member Valerie Magdaleno said officials were able to hold onto some counselors and transfer them to mental health specialists for students if the employees had the right credentials.”
They have already been told the State, itself holding an $80 billion deficit, will not and can not bail them out. Cutting union set salaries is not on the table.
Santa Ana School District Lays Off 262 Employees
by Spencer Custodio, Voice of OC, 5/20/25 https://voiceofoc.org/2025/05/santa-ana-school-district-lays-off-262-employees/
Classrooms in the Santa Ana Unified School District are expected to get a little more crowded next semester as 262 employees are getting laid off while officials grapple with declining enrollment and a $154 million budget deficit.
Officials say they’ve tried shuffling some employees over to other positions to reduce layoffs.
Santa Ana Unified School Board member Valerie Magdaleno said officials were able to hold onto some counselors and transfer them to mental health specialists for students if the employees had the right credentials.
“We’re also preserving essential counselors … by transitioning counselors into certified mental health specialists,” Magdaleno said at Monday night’s special meeting.
The layoffs are hitting a host of employees: counselors, English teachers, math teachers, elementary school teachers, among many others.
Staff said some class sizes could go up to 29 students per classroom, depending on the grade, adding the increases will be below the 31-student maximum spelled out in the teachers union contract.
Shrinking Budget, Dwindling Enrollment
The layoffs come as school districts across Orange County and California are grappling with shaky budgets and dwindling student populations
Some, like Santa Ana Unified, hired a wave of personnel using COVID bailout money from the federal government and are now facing a structural deficit due to the loss of that money and declining enrollment.
“We are no longer the second largest school district in Orange County. We are now the fourth,” Santa Ana Unified school board president Hector Bustos said.
He blamed the housing crisis for much of the enrollment drop.
“Santa Ana has become unaffordable for many of our families. We are losing students faster than any other districts in the county,” Bustos said, adding that charter schools are also peeling off students.
Santa Ana Unified, with roughly 35,000 students, has the highest salary spending of all OC school districts, according to a budget presentation earlier in Monday’s special meeting.
The presentation found the school district spent roughly $285 million on salaries for the 2023 to 2024 school year.
Capistrano Unified, Orange County’s largest school district at roughly 38,000 students, spent $234 million on salaries in that same school year.
Board member Brenda Lebsack blamed her colleagues for the school district’s financial crisis.
She told her colleagues officials need to figure out exactly what’s driving the deficit, “otherwise we will continue to be in this situation of layoffs year after year.”
“The root cause is a series of bad decisions by 3 of the board members that resulted in budget deficits and steeper decline of enrollment,” Lebsack said, lamenting the use of one-time COVID bailout dollars to hire more employees.
Board members voted 4-1 to begin the layoffs, with Lesback voting no.
She said parents are seeing low performance and enrolling their children into charter schools.
An Administrator-Run District?
Lebsack said she voted against laying people off so a county administrator would have to step in and run the school district because the budget would still be in a deficit.
“The board was told that if the district runs out of cash and has to borrow money from the state, a county administrator would have to run the district,” Lebsack said. “I see the consequence of removing the board’s decision-making power as in the best interest in student safety.”
Bustos criticized Lebsack’s characterization of the issues.
“She will try to convince you that her vote was in defense of educators,” Bustos said. “This is someone who has consistently opposed our unions.”
He was the only board member to respond to Lebsack’s comments and said she’s only on the school board for “political gain.”
“She’s not here for solutions, she’s here for spectacle as you can see,” Bustos said.
Meanwhile, school board member Katelyn Brazer Aceves said class sizes “will be slightly larger next year.”
Echoing similar sentiment from the board president, Brazer Aceves said officials will make sure no classroom has more than 31 students in it.
“I’m asking staff to monitor classroom sizes closely and make sure we remain under contract language.”
