The Sacramento City Unified School District is working to dig out of a $43 million budget deficit to avoid the county Office of Education or the state from taking over.

Sac City Unified will be voting on its fiscal solvency plan at Thursday night’s board meeting.

“I know a lot of people are really anxious about this, and I want all the staff affected to know that we really do care, and we know they are people,” board member Taylor Kayatta said.

Kayatta said the goal is to have the least amount of impact on students and the classrooms, but it means making difficult decisions.

“The kids might notice, ‘Oh, the teacher is running out of paper.’ That’s not an insignificant thing, but we’re not taking teachers out of the classroom,” he said.

Kayatta said they are cutting supply budgets, other than custodial, by 30%. The big cut is coming to administrators, consolidating to 270 full-time employees, the number they were at before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Administrators with teaching credentials may be moved into classroom settings.

“I’ve been on the board for three years now and we’ve always been talking about this,” Kayatta said.

Kayatta said determining a plan came quicker than they would have liked after discovering an unexpected $43 million in spending, which he said came mostly from special education contract costs this year and last.

Additionally, the district had been using COVID funds since 2020, but the financial problems it was facing pre-pandemic finally caught up with it.

If they do not fix it fast, the district could fall into an $88 million deficit by the 2027-2028 school year. That would require the county or state stepping in to control the budget.

Kayatta said he is looking at this as an opportunity to reinvest in who he thinks matters most: the students.

Administrators who are getting cut will be notified by the end of the fiscal year.

District President Jasjit Singh said in a statement that a fiscal reset will ensure “responsible budgeting, long-term stability, and a stronger district for every student.”

“Much of this effort is about smarter use of resources. Whether we were facing this current situation or not, I believe a consistent audit practice and maximizing efficiency is a good practice,” Singh said.

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