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The Mountain View Whisman School District is preparing for another round of budget cuts in the coming months, this time with the potential to affect staff members directly interacting with students.
The school board already signed off on $7.4 million in budget cuts in early 2026, which took effect this school year. Those reductions included the elimination of 20 district office positions and nightly custodial services.
“Last year’s reductions were not enough,” Chief Business Officer Rebecca Westover told the board at an Aug. 20 meeting. “They came almost entirely from the district office and custodial services. That was the right place to start.”
Now, district officials plan to work with the board to set another reduction target in September. After that will come several months of work to decide specific cuts, with a final board vote expected by Jan. 14, Westover said.
The budget crunch comes as Mountain View Whisman faces sluggish revenue growth and rising costs. The district is funded primarily through local property taxes, which are based on assessed property values. Those values were increasing for many years, but they have begun to stagnate – and it’s expected to stay that way, Westover said.
The district’s 2026-27 school year budget, which the board passed in June, forecasts $122 million in revenues and $131 million in expenditures. That puts the district in a deficit of roughly $9 million this school year, and the district projects that deficit spending will grow in the coming years.
Westover stressed that finding places to cut will necessitate reassessing the district’s staffing levels. That’s because approximately 80% of the district’s budget goes toward its employees.
Since the 2017-18 school year, the district has increased the number of student support positions by 51% as revenue grew, Westover said. This includes counselors, behavior technicians and mental health specialists.
Before, the staff-to-student ratio was nine to one, Westover said. Now, it’s seven to one.
Another challenge is that the district’s current budget doesn’t include salary increases past the current school year, because that’s when the current union contract ends.
Creating school-specific staffing allocations
As the district considers how it can tighten its spending, administrators plan to set a specific staffing allocation for each school, based on both the number of students enrolled and their level of need, Westover said. Superintendent Jeff Baier noted that this type of staffing model is the same system the state uses when it considers budget cuts.
“We have not gone back to ask whether every position still matches the need that created it,” Westover told the board. “That’s not saying that the individuals in these positions aren’t doing good work, but maybe the need has changed since we created them.”
Baier added that after getting guidance from the board, the district will be reaching out to other stakeholders, including teachers, students and parents.
I am guessing it’s a combination of Covid bloat in addition to the property taxes not growing much. I am glad they are acting responsibly and not driving us into a ditch like some of these other school districts that are going bankrupt. Going to require sacrifice by everyone, probably even the teachers.
The students are the ones that will suffer. Hope it works out for the district. Let’s see where this goes.