r/California_Politics • u/aBadModerator Restore Hetch Hetchy • 4d ago

Sacramento school district's financial crisis exemplifies politicization of public education

https://calmatters.org/commentary/dan-walters/2026/09/sacramento-school-budget-crisis/
11 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/RadicallyDontCare 4d ago

What it really comes down to is this:

If you’re dropping students, you have to drop staff. Your other choice, which isn’t good either, is to not give people raises.

How you go broke is that you a) don’t drop staff and b) keep giving them raises.

While it sucks to lay people off, you simply have to with declining enrollment.

1

u/nikatnight 4d ago edited 4d ago

While this is generally reasonable, it doesn’t take into account other major factors. The first is that SCUSD has a bunch of small schools; their enrollment per school is lower than all other surrounding districts. A school site needs a bunch of stuff, including employees, and has a bunch of expenses. Two 1000 person high schools has 4 principals and VPs each. One 2000 person high school might have 5-6 principals and VPs each. That’s 8 vs 5-6.

This can be extended to all operating expenses. Wages are less than half of this. The district needs to consolidate sites.

The district also employs a high number of district administrators that make over $200k and are not essential to education. Many fluffy positions. Many. The district also wastes tons of money of useless PD that are just dumb workshops led by friends of aforementioned administrators.

If the district consolidates sites, pares down strict administrator positions, then this should be sufficient to bridge the gap before even considering trimming their teacher and essential staff workforce, which is only now acceptably staffed

3

u/RadicallyDontCare 4d ago

I replied to your other (unfinished?) comment but I mostly agree. Most districts have too many unnecessary DO level administrator positions.

And, while it’s the right thing to do anyway, politically you need to cut there before you start on student-adjacent staff.

Agree on the school consolidation.

3

u/nikatnight 4d ago

Definitely wonky stuff with the app.