Overview:
WCCUSD leaders have begun unveiling early details about budget cuts that the district says are necessary to pay for employee raises.
The raises are part of tentative union agreements that the school board will soon be ratifying.
The board will also make any final decisions about budget cuts and is expected to begin those discussions in February.
West Contra Costa Unified School District officials are preparing for deep budget cuts after agreeing to significant pay raises for educators following a four-day strike in December.
The district’s tentative agreement with United Teachers of Richmond (UTR), set to be ratified by the school board Wednesday, includes an 8% salary increase over two years. Because of “me too” clauses in its other employee labor contracts, the same raises will apply to its other unions.
Fulfilling those agreements is expected to cost $57.2 million over the next three years — result in a $127 million structural deficit over that same time period, said acting Associate Superintendent of Business Services Jeff Carter at a community meeting earlier this week. To close the gap, the district will need to make about $60 million in budget cuts and draw from two reserve funds to maintain a balanced budget.
Carter announced this financial outlook at a Tuesday meeting of the district’s Local Control Accountability Plan committee (DLCAP), a district group tasked with reviewing and making recommendations on how to spend funds to help the district’s most vulnerable students.
“Everything is changing daily based on feedback we get from the community,” Carter told the DLCAP committee. “There’s nothing locked in to tell you (where cuts will be made) — that’s not where we’re at in this process.”
Carter is in the position left vacant by Kim Moses, who announced her retirement in December following nearly two decades in the district and a recent vote of “no confidence” by UTR following the strike. He said the district is looking at “high level, big picture” solutions to balance the budget. By February, WCCUSD expects to outline more specific plans on what it will propose cutting.
The district, which already had faced a deficit before reaching its tentative agreements with the unions, says it will have to make $3.1 million in cuts this year, $42.4 million in cuts in the 2026-27 school year and $14.2 million in cuts in 2027-28. To offset the reductions, the district is depleting its Fund 17 reserve, which has $28.5 million. It is also pulling $13 million annually from its Fund 71 reserve, which is one of the district’s Post Employment Benefits accounts, which funds retirees’ lifetime health benefits and surviving spouses’ benefits. UTR had previously suggested that Fund 71 could be a potential source of money for raises.
District considering laying off 10% of staff from each union
To balance the budget, Carter said the district is considering laying off up to 10% of staff from each bargaining unit. For a union such as UTR, which represents about 1,400 educators, the equivalent of about 140 fulltime jobs could be eliminated. The Teamsters, which represents employees who work in food service, custodians, clerks and school security, have about the same number of members. District officials estimate this could save about $4.1 million.
The district is also considering merging some school sites and classrooms to maximize efficiency.
Because of continued declining enrollment, some class sizes are smaller than needed, and the district is hoping to recalibrate staffing and class sizes next year. Carter said “right sizing” classes could save $5 million at elementary schools and $5.3 million at secondary schools.
A merger of middle schools, though the district did not indicate which ones, could save almost $1 million. And transferring students in K-8 schools to traditional middle schools could save the district another $1.5 million, according to data shared by Carter.
At a Thursday community listening session at Fred T. Korematsu Middle School in El Cerrito, Superintendent Cheryl Cotton said the merger may impact middle schools that have less than 400 students enrolled. This includes Betty Reid Soskin, Lovonya DeJean, and Pinole Middle Schools, according to the most recent enrollment state data.
The proposals were met with concern from community members, many of whom worry that laying off teachers or increasing class sizes would undercut the benefits of the recent pay raises.
“This looks like exactly what was part of the problem before the strike, and this feels almost like you’re setting us up to lose our teachers again, because if we make these kinds of cuts, it’s going to put us back in the position where they’re going to be overworked. They’re going to end up with huge classroom sizes. We’re going to end up with major deficits in support,” said Yolanda Vierra Allen, DLCAP vice chair. “This impact, it feels devastating.”
WCCUSD teachers are some of the lowest paid in the county, so UTR has argued that increasing salaries will help teacher retention and recruitment. The union has also said the district has a vacancy crisis, which is impacting student learning.
In the last five years, the district has lost about 1,500 educators, according to UTR. That is the equivalent of 300 teachers per year, and the district has struggled to hire at the same pace.
However, Cotton said while WCCUSD started the school year with 70 vacancies, only 20 were for classroom teachers.
“That 20 is about 1% of the total workforce. And I just want to be aware of that,” Cotton told the committee. “We’re not talking about 50% or 20% of our teachers … and so if that helps to give some context to what we’re talking about … because it is a crisis, it is a problem, it is a huge deal. But numbers-wise, it’s a small percentage.”
Cotton said the district has identified positions it may eliminate but declined to share specifics because district leadership wants to consult with labor unions first. Staff will be notified by March 13 regarding any layoffs.
Carter said if the district were to freeze hiring for vacant positions that it’s not legally obligated to fill, WCCUSD could save about $1.5 million — an option it’s considering.
Cotton told the committee that she understands the magnitude of these cuts but emphasized that reductions are unavoidable. She also reminded meeting attendees that while district staff make recommendations, final decisions rest with the school board.
“The community has lifted up and said, ‘We support our teachers. We want them to have everything that they want,’ ” Cotton said. “This is what this looks like.”
“There are choices that we have to make in order to meet the obligations that we are stepping into and agreeing to,” Cotton continued. “My job is to come up with solutions to this deficit. The board is what makes the decisions.”
Parent Cristal Banagan said instead of laying off district employees, the district needs to seriously examine which contracts it could cut instead.
“I’m talking about the contractors that are not even helping our children learn,” Banagan said. “Let’s find places where we can cut (there).”
Contracting out for services has been a sticking point for both teachers and the Teamsters, particularly for special education services.
WCCUSD has more than doubled its spending on outside special education contractors in the past five years, according to budget data cited by a teachers union-commissioned report. Yet families say services have become less frequent and lower in quality — citing examples such as speech therapy delivered over Zoom.
The report issued Nov. 18 by The Private Equity Stakeholder Project says that in the last year WCCUSD spent more than $14 million on three private equity-owned special education contracts. If the work had been done by WCCUSD staff, the school district would’ve saved about $6 million — enough money to hire more than 200 permanent special education employees. That would have provided more instructional hours and more stability for students, the report said.
An in-house analysis by the Teamsters found that the district could’ve saved $5.6 million in 2024-2025 if it did not contract out union jobs such as paraprofessionals and grounds, operations and maintenance work, and instead hired staff.
However, Carter said cutting contracts is not the end-all-be-all solution that many believe it to be. Many contracts are in place because the district is legally obligated to fill certain positions, such as paraprofessionals and special education aides, and it has not been able to hire staff internally.
Associate Superintendent of K-12 School Operations Summer Sigler said contractors like Bay Area Community Resources (the largest service provider within WCCUSD), provide critical and direct service to students.
“They provide us with social workers, mental health clinicians after school. It’s the staff that supports and provides academic support and enrichment to kids,” Siglar said. “Some people believe those should all be district employees. And you know, we maybe could have a 20-year plan to make that happen, but we don’t have the infrastructure to do the training and supervision of the level of mental health providers that they can provide us, because they actually do the ongoing training and clinical hours.”
Sigler noted that she appreciated the questions and concerns raised by the committee and has had many of those same conversations with herself and the team.
“I don’t think any of us slept last week,” she said. “You go home thinking about the impact — the who and the what.”
Cotton said the district is considering making $2.7 million in cuts to contractor spending, though discussions are ongoing.
She assured families that while decisions must be made quickly, community input remains critical. The district shared the same data with community members during multiple in-person and online meetings this week.
District officials said specific program and staffing cuts will be discussed by the school board in February.
The school board is expected to ratify the tentative agreements for both UTR and the Teamsters at its Jan. 21 meeting at 6:30 p.m. at DeJean Middle School in Richmond. Members of the public can join in person or via zoom. The zoom link can be found on the agenda once it is posted here.
The cuts should be to the enormous numbers of third-party consultants and contractors who aren’t school district employees. And if that’s not enough, start cutting the number of associate superintendents.
My understanding is that the district employees are not specialized enough for areas such as special education. From Ms. Sigler, Associate Superintendent: Associate Superintendent of K-12 School Operations Summer Sigler said contractors like Bay Area Community Resources (the largest service provider within WCCUSD), provide critical and direct service to students.
“They provide us with social workers, mental health clinicians after school. It’s the staff that supports and provides academic support and enrichment to kids,” Siglar said. “Some people believe those should all be district employees. And you know, we maybe could have a 20-year plan to make that happen, but we don’t have the infrastructure to do the training and supervision of the level of mental health providers that they can provide us, because they actually do the ongoing training and clinical hours.” As a former special ed teacher I would concur.
What services do you believe that BACR provides to special education students? BACR services are forbidden from being included as part of an IEP. The district literally prohibits it. BACR is great, but they have little or nothing to do with special education.
In response to the bit about licensing hours and supervision, they are talking about practitioners who are not independently licensed yet. The contract company has figured out a way to hire lower cost therapists that require supervision. My question is why aren’t they able to hire fully licensed workers who don’t require supervision? That one switch would eliminate the need for a contract company to manage things. I bet it would be way less expensive to just hire people as district employees who are fully independent and not requiring clinical hours. Cut out several middle men.