Ross Valley School District approves staffing cuts

The Ross Valley School District has approved layoffs and schedule cuts for a range of jobs for the 2020-21 school year.

The reductions, which equal 7.5 full-time positions, affect more than a dozen jobs across both elementary and middle school grades. However, they are less than the trustees initially discussed at their meeting on March 3, when the equivalent of 10.1 full-time positions were in jeopardy.

The board approved a resolution to make the cuts and issue final layoff notices by a 5-0 vote on Tuesday.

“These have everything to do with enrollment,” Marci Trahan, assistant district superintendent, said at Tuesday’s online board meeting. Trahan will move up to the superintendent post when Rick Bagley retires at the end of June.

Trahan said the board could further reverse the reductions or layoffs as the fall term gets closer. The state’s deadline to finalize any such actions is May 14 — but those moves can be rescinded later on if the situation changes.

“We also hope very much that natural attrition will allow us to retain our valued employees,” board president Anne Capron said.

Many of the reductions in hours are as small as the equivalent of 0.2 of a full-time position — or about one day out of a five-day workweek.

The positions that will be eliminated or scaled back include: a K-5 intervention specialist, three transitional kindergarten-to-fifth grade teachers; an elementary art teacher; a K-8 music teacher; a sixth-grade English and history teacher; a sixth-grade math and science teacher; and a sixth-grade math workshop teacher.

The reductions will also affect a physical education position in the seventh and eighth grades; eighth-grade positions in math, history, science and English; eighth-grade French class; and sixth-grade inventors lab.

The district’s staff report, read aloud by Bagley at Tuesday’s meeting, said a decline in elementary school enrollment over the last few years is now affecting White Hill Middle School in Fairfax.

“Our current fifth-grade cohort is smaller than our current sixth-grade cohort,” Bagley said. “And our current sixth- and seventh-grade cohorts are larger than our current eighth-grade cohort.

“As our fifth-graders move forward into sixth grade and our current seventh-graders move to eighth grade, we will need to reduce the number of sixth- and eighth-grade sections for next year.”

Ross Valley is one of many Marin school districts where budget cuts are being implemented. Districts are also uncertain about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic to school funding.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to release the traditional “May revise” budget next week, but Marin school officials said they expect the May state budget to be incomplete because of the delay in property tax collections, a decline in sales tax revenue and other fiscal issues affected by the virus.

Midge Hoffman, chief business official for the Ross Valley district, said Tuesday that the financial impact will be worse than the “enormous hit” school districts took during the Great Recession. Hoffman said there were three versions of the state budget in the 2008-09 recession — one in May, one in the fall and one in the winter.

Bagley asked Hoffman to bring an updated list of potential future budget cuts to the next board meeting. The district had already been looking at where to cut before the virus pandemic, but now the need could become more immediate.

“I think we need to have options,” he said.