Proposed cuts were met with frustration and debate from VUSD staff, students and community members at recent board meeting
On Feb. 25, 2025 VUSD hosted their monthly board meeting concerning the resolution to reduce classified staff by EFT. Over 349 people were in attendance and over 900 people were watching online via Instagram and Youtube Live.
While the focus was generally on teacher librarians, janitorial staff and counselors, many staff positions were at stake, including assistant principals, learning directors, psychologists, bilingual paras, Homestead program, early childhood counselors, elementary counselors, secondary single subject teachers including English, Chemistry, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Art and Music. Alongside CTE classes and Physical Education were all of the services planned to be reduced or discontinued for the 2025-26 school year.
The meeting began with highlights from student representatives from Foothill Technology High School, El Camino High School as well as Ventura Adult and Continuing Education (VACE). After some discussion the floor was opened to public comments. Public comments began at 6:30 p.m and continued until after 11 p.m where each person was limited to two minutes of speaking time. Teachers, counselors, students, alumni and passionate community members were amongst the 193 people who signed up to speak. Board member Sabrena Rodriguez said, “We disagree, that happens all the time but that doesn’t mean that anyone up here does not value the work being done at our schools.” VHS student Dillon Koehn ‘25 spoke at the meeting, he said, “There was still so much I could have brought up, […] I feel like there’s a lot of people who couldn’t get their full say in two minutes.”
President of the board Calvin Peterson in response to opening arguments that broke out in the audience said, “I understand this is going to be a passionate meeting […] and we want to hear what you have to say but we don’t want the interruptions. We are just as passionate about education as you are.”
Before opening the floor, the board did assure the public that there was no mention of the library closures. Met with comments from the audience, “Well who will run them then?”
Margaret Sellers, a teacher at Pacific High School, spoke during the public comments section, also displaying a table from a previous VUSD Board Meeting on Dec. 13, showing the 17 million dollar difference in the district’s adopted budget and first interim statistics.
The board concluded to remove Elementary School Counselors, Secondary Counselors and Teacher Librarians from the reductions, taking an approximated 38 positions to 19.28 to be reduced in the 2025-26 school year. This still leaves selected Assistant Principals, Learning Director, Psychologist on Special Assignment, Bilingual Teacher on Special Assignment, Homestead Study Grades 6-8, Early Childhood Counseling, Secondary Single Subject teachers including English, Chemistry, Social Science, Mathematics, Art, Music, as well as Secondary CTE including Legal, Building and Construction Trades, Theater and Physical Education. Koehn said, “They didn’t actually address any of the issues, they didn’t even consider a lot of the things brought up to them, so I hope they have more meetings but it was really disappointing.”
The budget as discussed by Peterson is not definitive, and will be unresolved until June when the final budget is approved by Gov. Gavin Newsom and allocated to school districts.
These changes and budget cuts are not seen at only VUSD, but state-wide, as America adjusts to the potential ramifications of losing the Department of Education, but also because all COVID-19 funds that were used to hire and create new positions in school districts have been used. These cuts were also made due to the fact that Measure H did not pass when voted on in November, this proposition would have enabled the continuation of funds that were already in place at the district level, Measure H did not pass by a little over 100 votes. With its discontinuation, the district had less money to allocate towards classified staff positions. Yet as pointed out by several staff members at the meeting, questions arose surrounding money mismanagement at the district level, and how funds had been spent in the previous years when they were aware of this deadline. VUSD notified their staff via email at the end of January. Positions and staff that will be cut will be notified also via email by Mar. 15.
