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After the Mountain View Whisman school board cut over $7 million from its budget in January, further reductions for next school year remained on the table. That no longer appears to be the case.
Despite the district expecting to continue running a deficit, school board members last week expressed opposition to making more cuts in time for the 2026-27 school year. In particular, the majority of the trustees weren’t interested in eliminating the district’s dedicated PE instruction or a free after-school program for students in need, both of which were being considered as potential cuts.
The district has been facing financial difficulties largely because local property tax revenue, which is its main funding source, has been stagnating. With low property tax growth forecast to continue, the district foresees deficit spending increasing over time.
At a March 5 meeting, Superintendent Jeff Baier asked trustees to provide further input on both PE and the Extended Learning Opportunities Program, which provides free after-school care for students from low-income families, those who are learning English and those in the foster care system. With much still unknown about the district’s future financial picture, Baier advised the board to take a restrained approach.
“At this point in time, I would recommend we go forward with both programs for the next school year,” Baier told the board. “We can get greater clarity on the budget during this next school year.”
Board weighs in on further cuts
In January, the board greenlit $7.4 million in cuts, including reducing 20 district office positions, nightly custodial services and individual computers for younger students. In February, staff adjusted the district office reductions to include an additional part-time position, bringing the total cost savings up to $7.5 million.
That was less than the $9 million that the board had originally sought to cut. During an initial review of recommended reductions in early January, trustees hesitated to change programs that support low-income students, such as ELOP, or to cut dedicated teachers for elementary school STEAM and PE instruction.
This past week, trustees stuck to that position, agreeing with Baier to hold off on making further changes.
One reason was that there’s still uncertainty around state funding for ELOP. While Mountain View Whisman has been able to keep the program cost neutral thus far, the district expects to contribute at least $1 million annually starting next school year. It could be even more expensive if the district doesn’t receive an anticipated $660,000 in additional state funding, which they won’t find out about until California’s budget is finalized this summer.
“I think we should stay the course for this year and see how things are going to play out,” board member Devon Conley said.
In terms of the proposal to stop contracting with Rhythm and Moves, the company that provides dedicated teachers for PE instruction, some board members pointed to a district survey in which most classroom teachers favored eliminating dedicated STEAM teachers rather than dedicated PE teachers. However, the board already opted not to get rid of STEAM teachers when they made the initial cuts in January.
During the time that students are in PE, classroom teachers have preparation time. If those teachers were required to take on PE instruction, the district would have to reorganize schedules to accommodate preparation time.
“I would like to see the continuation of … Rhythm and Moves to give us a longer runway but also to follow the survey,” board member Ana Reed said. “To go against their wishes at this point, when it’s not crucial to our financial situation, it doesn’t seem like something that I personally want to run.”
Board member Bill Lambert, on the other hand, disagreed with his fellow trustees and expressed a desire to get rid of the Rhythm and Moves contract, which would save the district approximately $1 million per year.
“It makes a lot of sense right now to transfer the responsibility for physical education on the teachers, and they’ll have their prep hours by sending the kids to the STEAM classrooms,” Lambert said.
At the end of the board’s discussion, Baier chimed in to add that Mountain View Whisman has a number of programs that are partially funded by the state but consistently require contributions from the district to operate, including ELOP and preschool.
“The question is, how many of those can we afford to sustain?” Baier said. “I think we are going to have to come down to making choices because we can’t deficit spend on every single underfunded state initiative.”
Here’s a suggestion. Instead of cutting preschool, science OR STEAM, take a look at the outrageous pay of senior staff for this small district. As of 2023, the Public Information Officer for the Mountain View Whisman School District received a total compensation of $332,244.02, which includes both salary and benefits.
You’re not going to save that much. You need to find a million dollars. You need someone to do the job. You can’t NOT do communications or all the parents will scream like I did when my kids were young. Maybe you can find someone to do it for $250k all in. So you ended up saving $80.
Thank you for mentioning this, Erin.
I honestly do not know why we even have a PIO in the first place. We get almost no regular communications from the districts, except for the bi-weekly Supt News. Any special requests take weeks to complete.
Other neighboring school districts with similar size (sunnyvale and los altos) employ some sort of communications manager or specialist with max half the compensation of MVWSD’s PIO.
Yes, actually I get better updates through Charles di Fazio’s newsletter, Facebook, and group.io. If they were serious about budget cuts they would have eliminated senior positions not junior ones. Think of the salary, benefits, and pension obligations.
Two positions that don’t need to be there: Public Information Officer and Director of Federal, State, and Strategic Programs. These are not roles that other comparable elementary school districts have, that’s almost $1M right there.