Poway Unified school District takes Action to deal with 28 million dollar challenge
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| Poway Unified School District provides K-12 Education for North Central San Diego County from Rancho Penasquitos to Rancho Bernardo |
Summary of the PUSD 24-25 Budget Situation
Budget Situation:
1. PUSD is facing its largest budget deficit in decades: a $28 million shortfall for 2024-25.
2. The deficit is projected to continue, with $24 million in 2025-26 and $25 million in 2026-27.
3. Factors contributing to the deficit include:
- State budget shortfall of $73 billion
- Reduction in Prop 98 Guarantee for education funding
- End of COVID relief funds
- Reduced Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to just 0.76%
- Lower enrollment and attendance
- Increased operating costs
- Aging facilities requiring repairs and maintenance
Actions Being Taken:
1. Two-year budget solution plan:
- Minimum of $15 million in cuts for 2024-25
- Additional $10 million in cuts for 2025-26
2. No layoffs for permanent PUSD employees in the coming year
3. Evaluating vacant positions before recruitment and filling
4. Freezing vacant management positions
5. Reducing departmental budgets
6. Reimagining programs while considering priorities from a recent survey
7. Seeking input and suggestions from staff and community members
8. Collaborating with union leadership to approach budget reductions
9. Focusing on making cuts as far from the classroom as possible
10. Keeping staff informed through board meetings and budget updates
11. Exploring innovative ideas to minimize negative impacts on staff, programs, and the organization
The district leadership emphasizes the need for patience, creativity, collaboration, and a proactive mindset to navigate this challenging financial situation while maintaining their commitment to providing quality education. PUSD has had a reputation as one of the best in the region.
2024-25 Budget Fact Sheet for the Poway Unified School District - $28M Shortfall
The image includes the PUSD logo and a note stating that the information is based on the Governor's January 2024 budget proposal, subject to change with the May 2024 Revision.
The Challenge:
- PUSD will face its largest budget deficit in decades in 2024-25: a $28 million shortfall
The Solution:
- Two years of budget solutions
- Minimum of $15 million in cuts for the first year (2024-25)
- Additional $10 million cuts for the second year (2025-26)
Important to Remember:
1. No permanent PUSD employees will face layoffs for the coming year. Vacant positions will be evaluated before recruitment and filling.
2. The district is required by law to balance budgets. Without cuts, PUSD would have a negative general fund reserve in three years.
A table shows the projected deficits and reserve levels:
- 2024-25: ($28 million) deficit, 6.6% reserve
- 2025-26: ($24 million) deficit, 2.2% reserve
- 2026-27: ($25 million) deficit, -2.3% reserve
Why is this Happening?
1. The State budget includes a $73 billion shortfall and unprecedented reduction in Prop 98 Guarantee for education funding.
2. COVID relief funds are ending, impacting funding for student mental health and learning loss recovery positions.
3. Anemic Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for Districts: reduced to just 0.76%
4. Lower enrollment & attendance across PUSD
5. Increased operating costs, including unfunded mandates for TK and special education busing, and costly facility repairs
The district states they are committed to prioritizing the quality of their exceptional educational programs and are approaching the process thoughtfully and collaboratively.
The fact sheet ends with a call for ideas and suggestions, providing a shortened URL for feedback.
Poway Unified starts new school year with multi-million-dollar challenges – NBC 7 San Diego
Summer break is officially over for tens of thousands of students in the Poway Unified School District, which is going into the new school year facing some challenges.
Due to a number of factors, including reductions in state funding and COVID-19 relief dollars, Poway Unified had to make $12.5 million in budget cuts.
Interim Superintendent Greg Mizel said they were able to avoid pink-slipping staff members and protect counseling and other support services, but they did have to make cuts to some programs, like the Connect Academy, which will now only serve middle school students.
“When you take away a thing, or you reduce a thing, there's always going to be some unfortunate consequences of that, right. But we did our best, I would say that,” Mizel said. “So now we're facing forward this school year another $15 million challenge. Of course, we're hoping in January there's better news, but you have to hope for the best and plan for the worst.”
At the same time, the district is searching for a new superintendent.
Former superintendent Dr. Marian Kim Phelps was fired earlier this year and is facing lawsuits alleging threats and harassment. Phelps was accused of harassing members of Del Norte High's softball team for not clapping loudly enough for her daughter during an awards ceremony and was removed after an independent investigation.
Mizel said while his office deals with these issues at the district level, the teachers remain focused on students and learning.
“Our staff are full of passion. They pour into our children daily. They care about our kids. So, you know, yeah, it's not, it's not fun when there's transition in an organization like ours at the top. But to be honest, boots on the ground, the people in the classrooms, they're doing what they've always done. They're taking care of our kids. 6:33
For the tens of thousands of students at 41 campuses in the district, those challenges don't exist. Instead, they were treated to celebrations and fanfare on their first day of school.
At Sunset Hills Elementary in Rancho Peñasquitos, a big celebration was held in honor of the school’s 50 years of teaching and learning. Each student was also given a shiny gold pencil to commemorate the milestone.
Wednesday also marked a major milestone for the Wade family. Their youngest son Gabe started kindergarten.
Gabe’s dad William said dropping him off was “bittersweet.”
“You know, it's an emotional day, just seeing one of our kids venturing off for their first day of school."
Looking Ahead to 2024
Looking Ahead to 2024
By Marian Kim Phelps, Ed.D. Superintendent
As the Superintendent of the Poway Unified School District, I am excited to share our priorities for the upcoming year. Building on the progress we've made in 2023, our focus remains on enhancing the world-class educational experience we are providing for each and every student in our district.
First, addressing learning gaps remains a critical priority. The pandemic has undeniably impacted student learning, particularly in foundational subjects like math and English language arts. While Poway Unified has among the top test scores in San Diego County, we want to ensure more students are meeting and exceeding grade level expectations. To tackle this, we continue to invest in professional development. For example, our math trainers have done an excellent job in teaching teachers how to make math more accessible and collaborative, helping students shift their mindset for problem-solving. For reading, all Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grader teachers, along with our Education Specialists have received training on how to teach reading foundation skills. By equipping educators with innovative teaching strategies, sound pedagogy, and resources, we can better support our students in bridging these gaps. We are also providing targeted interventions, tutoring, and supplemental learning opportunities at our school sites to ensure students who need extra help are getting it. By screening and identifying struggling learners earlier and implementing the Response to Intervention process, we can accelerate students’ learning through tiered instruction. Finally, we are addressing social-emotional learning, to ensure students are coming to school, ready to learn. This includes fostering personal connections to build school culture and belonging and partnering with families to remove barriers to school attendance and reduce chronic absenteeism. One great example of this is our Youth in Transition program, providing emergency housing, food, counseling, and transportation to students struggling with housing instability.
Digital citizenship is another key area of focus. In our increasingly digital world, it is essential that our students not only become proficient in using technology but also learn to navigate it safely and responsibly. This includes setting behavior and expectations on social media and partnering with families to implement guardrails and best practices at home. This year, we will continue our integration of Common Sense Media digital citizenship into our curriculum across all grades, ensuring that our students are well-prepared to handle the challenges and opportunities of the digital age. Additionally, our Technology & Innovation Department is tackling the topic of artificial intelligence in education, and how we can teach students how to use it responsibly and ethically. A.I. is increasingly shaping our world, and is already incorporated in technology such as Amazon’s Alexa or Grammarly. We must teach students about critical thinking, potential biases, privacy concerns, and ethical dilemmas inherent in AI technologies, ensuring they are prepared to make informed decisions as future innovators, consumers, and citizens.
Additionally, we're excited to continue expanding our global languages and career technical education (CTE) pathways. From Mandarin to American Sign Language, PUSD students are exposed to multiple languages early on, starting in elementary school. Through Project Lead the Way curriculum, the X-Ploration program, and Hour of Code initiatives, students are diving into science, technology, engineering, and math. By the time students reach high school in PUSD, our goal is that they understand their strengths and interests, which serve to guide their post-secondary plans. We are not just providing education for education’s sake. We are empowering world-class learners for a future that is quite different from what we currently know and understand. Our programs are constantly being adjusted with the help of our business and industry partners, which is vital in preparing our students for a diverse and evolving workforce. For example, we have added electric vehicles to our automotive technology class, esports, computer science and data science, as well as a more robust building and construction course. By offering a wider range of languages and CTE courses, we're opening doors to new cultural understandings and career opportunities. These programs not only enhance academic learning but also help students develop real-world skills and perspectives.
Finally, we will expand our alternative and flexible learning opportunities for students. What we learned from the pandemic is that one size doesn’t fit all. With our hybrid school, Connect Academy, we provide two days of in-person labs, collaboration, and social interaction and three days of live, virtual instruction. With our newest high school, Poway to Palomar Middle College, high school juniors and seniors attend both college and high school classes while earning their high school diploma and college credits at no cost! We are also working to build on dual enrollment options for high school students with our higher education partners. PUSD also has a Memorandum of Understanding with Cal State San Marcos that guarantees college admission for any PUSD student who has a 3.0 or above.
We are setting the stage for a successful and transformative year ahead. As we embark on this journey, I am confident that together as a community, we will continue to provide a world-class public education by adapting to the needs of our students and creating an enriching and supportive learning environment for all our students.
PUSD's Priorities and Challenges for 2024
By Michelle O'Connor-Ratcliff
School Board President
As President of the Poway Unified School District Board of Trustees, I am proud to share our district priorities and challenges for 2024 with the community. Our vision remains steadfast: to create the culture and conditions to empower world-class learners. This means that we will continue to strive to ensure that every student, in every PUSD classroom, at every PUSD school, receives an education that fosters their individual potential and prepares them to thrive in our increasingly global society.
Priorities for 2024
- Fostering a Sense of Belonging: Our top priority is to ensure that every student in our district feels a profound sense of belonging. We recognize, as does study after study, that education is most effective and achievement most pronounced in an environment where students feel safe, accepted, and valued. PUSD will continue to implement programs that promote inclusivity and social-emotional learning. We want students to feel a connection to others at school, whether peers or adults, and to know that they are cared for, seen, and respected. One way several of our high schools are accomplishing this is through Unity Days where students spend the day breaking down barriers between classmates, creating more cohesive peer learning communities through recognition of shared experience.
- Excellence in Academics and Beyond: We are committed to providing all our students with the resources and opportunities needed to challenge themselves and excel, not only in academics, but also in their personal growth: from our students with extensive support needs to our highest academic achievers. This includes offering advanced coursework, grade-level content supports, hands-on learning experiences, and mentorship and internship programs that cater to the diverse needs and interests of our student body. Teaming up with community and business partners creates a stronger connection between what students are learning inside the classroom and what students want to pursue in college or careers.
- Inclusive Opportunities in Multiple Pathways: Recognizing the varied interests and abilities of our students, we need to design our programs to be inclusive and accessible, allowing every student to explore and develop their skills in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), visual and performing arts (VAPA), career and technical education (CTE), and athletics. Our inclusive practices are advancing at every grade level so that students with extensive support needs are more and more able to access their education with their grade-level peers in an environment that is most effective for every student. For example, Garden Road Elementary has worked very hard on their WIN Time model, Adobe Bluffs Elementary is a showcase for its Ability Awareness Day and Unified Champion School designation, and co-taught classes have proliferated across the district.
Challenges for 2024
- Budget Constraints: School districts are facing a fiscal “cliff” with one-time COVID funding set to expire. That funding allowed us to begin the work of helping our students recover learning loss and social-emotional and mental health challenges following the pandemic. Ours is a success story in this area, but the work is not complete. Without that extra funding, our ability to maintain and expand these vital programs will be impacted. At a recent school board meeting, our Finance Department shared that for 2024-25, the Poway Unified School District is facing a projected general fund deficit, ranging from $15.6 million to $26.4 million based on current State budget assumptions. Declining enrollment, as many families relocate outside of San Diego, also presents a challenge in terms of funding and resource allocation. California funds public schools based on enrollment and attendance. We are working on strategies to attract and retain students, including enhancing our program offerings and improving our outreach to students who are chronically absent.
- Aging and Failing Facilities: Our school buildings need urgent attention. The average age of our schools is now over 32 years old, yet California does not provide dedicated facilities funding to school districts. Any repairs or maintenance takes away money from programs and people funded by PUSD’s general fund. As any homeowner knows, *not* maintaining or ignoring our buildings is not an option. Aging facilities not only pose safety concerns, but also limit our ability to provide a contemporary and world-class learning environment. The state expects local communities to support their local schools through voter-approved bonds. All funds generated by the last bond in 2008 have been used to build and renovate our schools. Readers may recall seeing images of leaking roofs and drainage problems at Poway High School recently. Without another bond measure, more school buildings will be in failing condition. Our children deserve better.
- Staffing Challenges: As with many industries, recruiting and retaining high-quality staff is crucial for our success. In PUSD we pride ourselves on our top-notch employees; they are the reason PUSD is so special. However, we continue to experience staffing vacancies. Recent mandates from the State, such as universal school meals for all students and universal transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds, created even more positions that we need to fill. It is difficult for a public agency to compete with private industry that can raise salaries and simply charge more for their services or products. PUSD continues to work hard to attract talented educators and support staff by supporting competitive compensation whenever we can, professional development opportunities, and excellent benefits. We have so much gratitude and appreciation for Team PUSD.
We are dedicated to upholding the highest standards of education that are expected of the Poway Unified School District, and we are confident that, with the support of our community, we will overcome these challenges and continue to provide world-class learning experiences and opportunities for our students. As we head into the new year, we invite readers to join us in shaping a bright and promising future for our children—our community’s rising innovators, leaders, critical thinkers, and learners. Thank you for your partnership and support.
Budget Information
IMPORTANT 2024-25 BUDGET UPDATE
Dear Team PUSD,
I want to take a moment to share some important information regarding our district's financial situation. As many of you may already be aware, based on current fiscal projections, PUSD is facing its largest budget deficit since the Great Recession (2008): a $28 million shortfall that we will need to address over the next two years, with a minimum of $15 million in budget solutions required for the 2024-25 school year.
This challenging financial landscape is a result of the State budget circumstance, which includes a projected $73 billion shortfall and an unprecedented reduction in the Prop 98 Guarantee for education funding. Factors such as the sunsetting of COVID pandemic relief, anemic Cost of Living Adjustment, declining enrollment, lower attendance rates, and increasing operating costs have all contributed to an ongoing, multi-year structural deficit for PUSD. Many school districts across the state will face similar challenges. You may have seen, just yesterday, it was announced that a neighboring school district will be issuing pink slips to over 200 employees.
While the fiscal situation is quite serious and requires imminent attention, I want to assure you that we are navigating this challenging moment in a thoughtful manner. Thanks to the keen foresight of our school board and the business support services division, PUSD is better positioned to respond to this challenge than many other school districts in the region. No permanent PUSD employees will face layoffs for the coming year. As part of this initial budget review process, we are beginning to have conversations with the leadership of PFT, PSEA, and APSM on how best to approach the budget reduction process for the 2024-25 school year. We are all in agreement: we hope to make cuts as far away from the classroom as possible. We are actively exploring a number of budget solution ideas that include freezing vacant management positions, reducing departmental budgets, reimagining programs all while being responsive to the priorities you helped establish through our recent Thoughtexchange survey. It is crucial that we all understand the significance of this challenge and work together to navigate it with patience, creativity, collaboration, and a proactive mindset.
While we are not in a unique situation, what is unique is that we have some of the very best people committed to serving our students and community. Your strong sense of purpose and remarkable willingness to go above and beyond is on full display daily. Your dedication and resilience in the face of challenges are what truly set us apart and give me hope for the future. As the rumors begin to swirl, and they will, please assume good intentions. If you hear something that is particularly concerning, please reach out to me directly.
I encourage you all to stay informed by tuning into the Board meetings and keeping an eye out for budget updates as we learn more at the state level and proceed with building the 2024-25 budget. Your input and innovative ideas are invaluable as we strive to minimize the negative impact on our staff, programs, and organization. If you have any suggestions you’d like to share, you can do so via Thoughtexchange here.
Please know that your support and positive efforts to keep student learning at the forefront of our daily activities are deeply appreciated. Our school board and leadership team will do everything we can to minimize the impact of cuts coming. While the road ahead may not be easy, I am confident that by working together and taking good care of each other, we will successfully navigate this fiscal crisis.
On behalf of our students and their families, thank you for your hard work and dedication. You matter, and in moments like these, you make all the difference.
Sincerely,
Greg Mizel
Interim Superintendent
Email PUSDBudget@powayusd.com for more information or with suggestions or questions
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