The Sacramento City Unified School District plans preliminary pink slips for central office employees while reimagining operations to address a $134 million shortfall.
JOSÉ LUIS VILLEGAS
jvillegas@sacbee.com
Cancy McArn, Sacramento City Unified School District’s interim superintendent, will receive a layoff notice on March 15, alongside the other 380 staffers in the district office.
Does that mean the Serna Center will be empty come summer? No. The move is an attempt to entirely restructure the central office amid a financial crisis that still threatens to put the district in state receivership as early as this fall.
“We recognize the district cannot open its doors July 1 with no staff or just the superintendent,” Chief Business Officer Lisa Grant-Dawson said at a board meeting Thursday night.
School districts are required to provide their employees layoff notices by March 15, but May 15 is the last day it can send final letters. This gives SCUSD about two months to “reimagine” district operations and decide what positions are essential, which are nice to have and what can be cut.
While the district looks like it has staved off fiscal insolvency for another few months, the time to plan for savings in the 2026-27 school year (by the end of which it is projecting a $268 million deficit) is running out quickly.
Cancy McArn was announced as the interim superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District on Feb. 5. She will receive a layoff notice on March 15, like the rest of the district staff, but many will be retained after May 15. JOSÉ LUIS VILLEGAS jvillegas@sacbee.com
The district board voted last month to issue preliminary layoff notices for more than 400 district employees. The list of positions slated for elimination mostly consisted of nonteaching staff, such as food services workers, instructional aides and many central office administrators.
Administrators and classified workers have protested the cuts, saying that cutting positions will result in a reduction of services to students and more burden on site administrators.
What does the district’s financial picture look like?
The total projected deficit as of Thursday was $134 million, an increase of $21 million over last month’s estimation after staff identified new costs the district would incur by July.
District staff don’t expect to run out of spendable cash until September, slowing down the district’s speeding descent toward insolvency, but not by a lot.
“What’s happening is, not only are we addressing the current year deficit, but we’re also building the budget for ’26-27 and then at the same time, projecting the current and the next year with our interim budget. So all three of those things are moving at the same time,” Grant-Dawson said.
McArn highlighted another issue the district faces: Several departments will experience major leadership changes in the next few months. Right now there is an interim superintendent, an interim CBO, an interim chief academic officer and an interim assistant superintendent of curriculum.
A new leader took McArn’s place in the human resources office when she was promoted to interim superintendent. Mary Hardin Young, the district’s longtime deputy superintendent, will retire by the end of this year.
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Jennah Pendleton is an education reporter for The Sacramento Bee. She previously covered schools and culture in the San Francisco Bay Area. She grew up in Orange County and is a graduate of the University of Oregon.