Sixteen employees of the Goleta Union School District will lose their jobs by June 30 because of the end of one-time funding to help school districts with the transition out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Santa Barbara Unified School District also sent letters to staff indicating plans to make similar cuts, and other school districts throughout the county are likely to follow.

The Goleta school board voted to cut six custodial positions, six content specialists, three intervention specialists and one licensed vocational nurse. In addition, nine content specialists will have their hours slashed. 

“We take these cuts very seriously,” said Conrad Tedeschi, assistant superintendent of fiscal services. “This was not something that we did on a whim.” 

The district said the cuts are necessary because of a loss in COVID-19 funding. The 2022-23 state budget established two block grants to provide school districts with the funds for a smooth transition out of the pandemic. The Goleta district received $5,309,238 in one-time funds.

“We had many discussions. We value every single one of our positions, and every single one of our people that have been working hard and got us through COVID,” Tedeschi said

The district used the funds to increase the number of employees in order to keep class sizes small and support after-school programs, and added several content specialists and intervention specialists whose positions are now being eliminated. The district also used the funds to increase the janitorial staff to keep up with cleaning during the pandemic. 

“The state and federal government gave us a ton of money, and we spent it in this district really like we were supposed to,” said David Simmons, assistant superintendent of human resources. “Some districts are still sitting on that COVID money in their reserves and, for us, we spent it all and mainly we hired people.”

The affected classified employees will be notified by March 15, although Simmons said the district already has begun notifications. The employees will be able to stay on until June 30.  

The district said the cuts would save a little more than $1 million. Before the pandemic, the district had 21 custodians on staff and brought on 10 more to assist with cleaning classrooms and surfaces during the pandemic at the district’s nine schools. 

“We decided that was an area where we could reduce because the cleaning protocol had been way reduced since COVID,” Tedeschi said. 

District staff said they tried to make cuts that would have as minimal an impact on students as possible. 

“We really tried to minimize the impact, which is why there were no teacher layoffs because we wanted to keep the class sizes the way they were; we didn’t want to increase class sizes,” school board member Emily Zacarias said.

In the wake of the cuts, teachers will have to fill in the gaps. 

Content specialists teach art, STEAM, physical education and other specialized classes. They are not certified positions, although some of the employees may have teaching credentials. 

Students still will take the classes but will receive the lessons from teachers once a week and then from content specialists the rest of the week. 

Next year, instead of students learning from the P.E. coach twice a week, they will go once a week, and the second time during the week will be taught by the teacher.  

“From the students’ perspective, it’s going to be the same,” Simmons said. “One day of art, one day of STEAM, one day of library and two days of P.E., but it will be provided by specialists four days a week and then by the teacher on the fifth day.”

Teachers won’t receive any extra pay or benefits for taking over some of those responsibilities.

“We’re asking the teachers to step it up a little,” Zacarias said. “It’s more work for the teachers, but it’s not going to impact the students receiving that instruction.”

An intervention specialist conducts state-mandated testing with English learning students who have to take the ELPAC to help inform education placement and determine whether a student can go into different English classes. 

“Because the testing is kind of tedious, because there’s listening, speaking, reading, writing, and you have to sometimes pull the kid out and do it one on one, so we had these positions to help teachers with that,” Zacarias said. 

With the elimination of the positions, teachers will go back to testing those students, Zacarias said, adding that at Isla Vista Elementary, they plan to bring in a substitute teacher to teach the classroom while the teachers conduct the assessments.

Like many of the school districts in California, GUSD’s operation budget expanded during the pandemic thanks to additional funding for pandemic-related needs. 

Staff members who were brought on with the pandemic-era funding were given temporary contracts when initially hired. Some of them have become permanent employees or took other jobs with different districts. 

While the cuts were made to try to limit the impact on students and teachers as much as possible, district officials say they do recognize how it will impact staff. 

“We tried to make sure things were done very thoughtfully, but there’s no easy way to do layoffs,” Tedeschi said. “Kids are on school campuses till after five o’clock. They probably see these night custodians, and some of them probably know these night custodians. So to say the kids won’t be impacted, well, they may not see their custodian friend that they had seen every night the prior school year.”

The Santa Barbara Unified School District also announced they would be notifying employees of layoffs by March 15.

Santa Barbara received $60 million in one-time funding, which it used on personal protective equipment, mental health support, learning recovery and other services, according to Ed Zuchelli, chief of communications for the district.

Along with layoffs, some roles may be impacted by “bumping,” which would cause people to move to new roles or locations in the district based on seniority.

It’s unclear what roles Santa Barbara will cut or how many, but there will be more layoff notices sent than the actual number of people laid off because next year’s budget is still in development, according to Zuchelli.