A late-night discussion Tuesday about staff layoffs led to some heated moments among Santa Barbara Unified School District board members.

The board approved sending layoff notices to employees in a 4-1 vote, with member Celeste Kafri voting against the move.

Board members William Banning, Rose Munoz, Sunita Beall and Gabe Escobedo voted to approve the layoff notices for 66 employees, including support specialists, 10 elementary teachers, 10 secondary teachers, an elementary assistant principal, and paraeducators.

Affected employees will receive notices before March 15, but layoffs won’t be finalized until May 15. District staff explained that an employee could receive a notice before March 15, but depending on retirements and the district’s final budget for next year, some layoff notices could be rescinded or employees could be moved into a different position.

Kafri criticized the process, arguing that more discussion was needed and not enough notice was given for community input.

As the discussion took place around 10 p.m., Kafri admitted she was “fried” and said the rest of the board wasn’t thinking clearly either. 

“It’s 10 p.m. We’re not giving ourselves time to understand the impact of these RIFS (reduction in force) on our students,” Kafri said.

Escobedo took issue with her comments, arguing that they had plenty of time to understand the issue. 

“I’m so tired of pretending like there’s no prep for these meetings and we didn’t meet with staff where they showed us this exact information and we had opportunities to talk about it and ask questions,” Escobedo said.

Kafri appeared visibly frustrated as Escobedo spoke, and when she raised her hand to respond, Escobedo said: “We know you’re going to rebut.”

“We can’t as a board continue to pretend like we come here and we’re hearing it from staff for the very first time at the podium. We’re not,” Escobedo said. “We’re thinking about these things, we’re meeting with staff, they’re talking to us about this.”

He added that while he “hates” this decision, it’s part of the board’s responsibility to deal with deficit spending.

The rest of the board agreed that they didn’t want to “kick the can down the road” by delaying the vote and wanted to give staff time to work on issuing layoffs and moving positions around. 

Kafri argued that it wasn’t fair for the public to find out about the proposed layoffs last Friday followed by the board making a decision on Tuesday.

“I’m not pretending,” Kafri said. “That is a true concern.”

With declining enrollment, the district is looking to make $2 million in reductions for the 2026-27 school year. 

The proposed staff reductions would save the district $5.1 million. District staff also proposed cutting $1.6 million in contract consultant services.

In total, the proposed reductions would save the district $6.8 million. With those savings, Conrad Tedeschi, assistant superintendent of business services, said they could use the funds for implementing a seventh period at junior high schools and add $3 million to the district’s reserves. 

John Becchio, assistant superintendent of human resources, said that between March 15 and May 15, they will evaluate “bumping rights” to see if an employee can be moved into a different vacant position in the district.

During public comment, community members and employees argued that students and classrooms shouldn’t have to carry the burden of budget savings. 

Michelle Voigt, a mother of two San Marcos High School students, argued that the layoff notices scare families, disrupt classrooms and create instability.

“My kids are impacted every day worrying if their teacher is going to stick with them or they’re not,” Voigt said. “We’ve gone through this year after year. You have people tell you every time what the instability costs them. It costs you great teachers.”

Banning, the school board president and former Goleta Union School District superintendent, noted that the process used to be the norm for school districts but became less common in recent decades because of a strong education budget. 

“This generation of teachers, of board members, of admin is not used to things that used to happen on a regular annual basis so that people understood very clearly that a precautionary RIFS was not a death sentence,” Banning said.