Beyond Soundbites: Addressing GUHSD's Long-Term Challenges

Dear GUHSD Community, 

You may have seen recent news coverage regarding the Grossmont Union High School District’s plan for addressing its long-term structural challenges. Given the complexities of these issues, it’s essential to go beyond simplistic soundbites and slogans. Below you will find information regarding the District’s reasoning for its proposals and answers to questions raised by members of our community. You will also find previous messages on these topics here:

Our Responsibility

The core responsibility of the Governing Board is to allocate resources thoughtfully to meet the evolving needs of our students. District leadership’s role is to create sustainable plans that fulfill this responsibility – not merely to find temporary solutions to maintain current staffing levels.

Through the beginning stages of the Portrait of a Graduate process, we’ve gained valuable initial insights into the skills and mindsets that our community believes are essential for students to develop by graduation. As GUHSD continues to focus on preparing students for college and careers, additional Portrait of a Graduate input from our families and community members reflects a desire to further support students’ emotional health and wellness and increase our students’ financial and technological literacy. We will be examining additional community input and feedback as we shape the GUHSD Portraits in the coming semester. 

Addressing these needs – and others we know exist – will require fresh thinking, openness to change, and potentially the strategic redeployment of resources:

• Nurturing emotional health and wellness: This is critical to students’ ability to engage in learning. While we currently have Wellness Together therapists and other supports in place, the demand for mental health services continues to grow. The end of one-time COVID funding forced the discontinuation of temporary counseling contracts. We are reviewing existing provider contracts to maximize their impact, but meeting the full scope of our students' needs will require additional resources. One potential support being discussed is establishing a dedicated team of mental health therapists and professionals who can assist counselors in addressing root causes that are preventing students from thriving at school.

• Increasing Technology Literacy: As we embrace new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, increasing technology literacy is essential for both students and educators. To prepare them for an ever-evolving world, we must ensure access to cutting-edge technology and support at our schools.

• Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening Skills: Our students scored 7.4 points below the state standard in English Language Arts, and we need to improve. Our students need more focused attention from our excellent English teachers to build these core skills that are essential to their future success.

• Supporting Our Growing Newcomer Population: Our District provides support for over 2,500 English Learners (EL). An EL is a student whose primary language is not English and who needs additional support to develop their English language skills.“Newcomers” are ELs who have been in U.S. schools for three years or less. Over the past four years, our Newcomer student population has grown by 212%. This year alone, we’ve welcomed 475 newcomer students. We have an obligation to provide the classes, support, and family engagement necessary for their success.

Plans are being developed to address these and other challenges. Some of these ideas will be presented at a future Governing Board meeting. However, effectively implementing any of these plans will require new funding or shifting existing resources. Either way, the needs must be met, as we are preparing students for the future. Meeting them requires very difficult decisions. Here’s why…

Our Financial Reality

I want to reemphasize several key points about our situation:

• We are projecting structural deficits in the years ahead, while our enrollment continues to decline.

• The California Legislative Analyst has warned of growing state budget deficits in the coming years.

• Despite declining enrollment, the District currently employs over 200 more full-time equivalent positions than we did a decade ago.

• The state requires school districts to submit their budgets by June 30, even though the state’s budget is not finalized until late June. This forces districts to plan their budgets based on uncertain information.

• State law mandates that we notify full-time employees by March 15 if their positions may be eliminated for the upcoming school year. No final decisions are made until May.

From the beginning, the District has been very clear that our proposed plan for addressing its long-term financial challenges – eliminating several District programs and services, 49 certificated positions, and 12 classified positions – is not just about balancing the budget. It is part of a long-term strategy to put the District in a strong enough financial position to meet our students’ evolving needs, such as those described above. When 87.7% of our entire unrestricted operating budget is allocated to employee compensation and benefits, any serious plan to address long-term challenges like ours must include staffing reallocations or reductions.

We take our responsibility to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars very seriously. This District has received three consecutive “A+” scores on the School Bond Transparency Report Card from the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, as well as a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association for 14 consecutive years.

"Why Can't You Just Use the District's Reserves?"

First, our responsibility is to prepare students for the future, and simply using reserves to close the budget gap does not provide a long term solution to the issues facing the District. I have said repeatedly that our plan is not simply about balancing the budget this year. It’s about meeting our students’ evolving needs even in the face of long-term financial challenges.

But let’s talk about the reserves…

A “structural deficit” is when our ongoing (as opposed to one-time) expenses are greater than the amount we expect to receive, most of which comes from the state. From the beginning, the District has been very clear that we will not recommend the Board use reserves – one-time funds that cannot be replenished after they are spent – to address ongoing structural deficits when a more sustainable path is available.

As Pearl Iizuka, our Interim Deputy Superintendent of Business Services, explained at the March 11, 2025, Governing Board meeting, reserves are intentionally set aside to protect the District from unexpected, high-impact financial challenges. These might include major infrastructure failures, unforeseen legal liabilities, or sudden revenue cuts from the state – situations that other districts have had to confront. We must also be prepared for crises we cannot predict. Only when such challenges arise will we truly appreciate the value of having reserves in place.

Some have suggested that the District has $100 million in "reserves." Others have said the District has a $50 million "surplus." Both claims are false. First, the ending fund balance is often conflated with reserves. They are not the same. As Ms. Iizuka clarified at the March 11 Governing Board meeting, our reserves are just a component of the overall ending fund balance (which is not close to $100 million, by the way). The ending fund balance includes specific set-asides for necessary technology replacements, school safety projects, and other critical needs. In other words, these funds are already allocated as part of a future budget. Neither the ending fund balance, nor the reserves can be described as a "surplus” of any kind, as a surplus implies excess, unassigned funds, which is clearly not the case here.

Further, using one-time funds to close a budget gap does not solve the underlying structural issues – it only delays them. Without addressing the core problems, we will continue facing the same challenges year after year, with fewer options to resolve them.

With all of that in mind, the responsible approach was to conduct a comprehensive review of services, programs, and staffing allocations, focusing on efficiency while minimizing disruption to our students' direct instructional experience. This is a common approach responsible districts have taken to similar challenges. If finalized by the Board in May, the District’s recommended reductions resulting from the review will impact all employee groups, not just…

Librarians

As part of our comprehensive review, we are reimagining how our libraries operate – and we are not shying away from that. With the growing reliance on digital resources, we are exploring alternative models that could best meet the future needs of our students. We want to create 21st-century learning acceleration centers, equipped with the latest technology. The staffing needs may change as a result. But, to directly address the misinformation circulating, no libraries are being closed, and no librarians are being fired.

The reality is that not all school libraries are staffed by credentialed teachers. In fact, only 19% of schools who completed the California Department of Education’s 2022–23 Annual School Library Evaluation reported having a teacher librarian working at least part time at their school. 

It has been suggested by some that returning librarians to the classroom would not result in cost savings for the District. The District’s current librarians cost the District over $1.735 million. Due to their expanded work year and additional compensation opportunities, librarians often earn a much higher salary than classroom teachers. Although no final decisions have been made, if the District were to consider changes to our staffing model as part of a broader effort to reimagine library services, the changes could reduce library costs by over $1.3 million.

If the Board approves the reduction of librarian positions in May, affected staff will not lose their jobs. Instead, they will be offered classroom teaching assignments, where they can continue to use their expertise and established relationships to support students directly – just like other teachers do every day.

Our current classroom teachers also create safe spaces for students every day. Some recent speakers at Board meetings seem to suggest that the only safe space on campus is a library staffed by a credentialed teacher. However, this view overlooks the dedication of all our educators, who work tirelessly to create these essential spaces for students.

We remain hopeful that enrollment projections and other circumstances will change before the May Board meeting, allowing us to retain teaching positions, strengthen programs to nurture student emotional health and wellness, and enhance technology literacy. 

The redeployment of our librarians, most of whom are experienced English teachers, to our classrooms could have a meaningful and positive impact for our students. Strong reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills are key to students’ success, and the latest California School Dashboard shows GUHSD students scored 7.4 points below the state standard – making this work even more urgent. As mentioned above, the District is exploring ways to ensure students in our English classrooms can receive even more focused attention from our excellent English teachers, and our current librarians may be a key part of the solution.

Maintaining a Collaborative Relationship with the Teachers Union

Let me be very clear: we want to maintain a collaborative relationship with our Teachers Union, GEA.

While I wasn’t in the District at the time, I know that over the past five years, the partnership between our bargaining group leadership, the Board, and District leadership has led to significant achievements, including negotiating a 23% overall salary increase and reopening our schools earlier than most districts in the state during COVID. Discussions would focus on core issues like salary, class sizes, and instructional quality – issues that impact all employees and students. Despite representing different constituencies, there was consistent collaboration rooted in a shared commitment to student success and fair compensation for the work required to achieve it.

Recently, however, despite the fact that there are over 980 employees in the bargaining unit and more than two dozen other certificated positions under consideration for elimination, the Teachers Union’s focus has shifted almost entirely to nine librarians. As a result, the public discourse has become disproportionately focused on a small group of employees who will still have jobs next year, at the expense of broader issues that affect all employees and students.

There has also been significant misdirection regarding administrative roles, such as the Chief of Staff position. The reorganization of the District Office has been underway for over a year and is ongoing. Some leadership positions have been eliminated, restructured, or created to form a team that the Board believes will best meet our students' needs. Making “either-or” comparisons oversimplifies the bigger picture.

More concerning is the approach of some union activists toward advocacy, which has made productive public discourse challenging during our last two Governing Board meetings. The behavior exhibited – such as turning their backs to and shouting down speakers with whom they disagreed – failed to reflect the openness, tolerance for differing views, and commitment to respectful disagreement that we aim to instill in our students. These qualities are essential to both a healthy democracy and a strong school system. Unfortunately, these tactics seemed aimed at silencing other perspectives. Such behavior is not conducive to fostering a healthy, collaborative relationship.

Also troubling is how some individuals have used students in advancing their arguments – such as including them in campaign photos and videos without proper consent. This has caused unnecessary distress for the students, who have repeated false claims, such as fictional proposed cuts to arts and music programs, Future Farmers of America, and the Global Language Leadership Program. As educators, our responsibility is to support and guide students, not contribute to their stress.

Moving Forward