![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SAC_0009_260502_JV_SDUSD.JPG\" "\\"The")
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The Sacramento City Unified School District sign outside of the Serna Center on Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, at the Serna Center in Sacramento<\/p>\n
JOS\u00c9 LUIS VILLEGAS<\/p>\n
jvillegas@sacbee.com<\/p>\n
Sacramento City Unified School District\u2019s former Chief Business Officer Janea Marking alleges in documents obtained by The Sacramento Bee that the board of trustees knowingly approved an \u201cunaffordable\u201d teachers union contract despite repeated warnings about its fiscal consequences.<\/p>\n
Thanks to a deluge in unbudgeted spending and systemic poor fiscal practices, the district is facing a projected deficit of about $390 million by 2027-28 and could run out of cash in July.<\/p>\n
FULL STORY: Ex-Sac City official alleges board favored teachers\u2019 contract over fiscal solvency<\/a><\/p>\n Key takeaways<\/p>\n \u2022 Marking wrote in a March 10 email to Sacramento County Office of Education officials that the board was warned multiple times about the financial consequences of its decisions and that projections showed a $122 million deficit by the end of 2027-28.<\/p>\n \u2022 Marking alleges the board adopted a strategy to \u201cflood the zone\u201d \u2014 deliberately creating chaos to redirect accountability away from leadership.<\/p>\n \u2022 The teachers\u2019 contract is far from the sole driver of the crisis. Unrestricted fund special education spending has grown from about $73 million in 2019 to a projected $170 million this year, and enrollment has declined more than 10% in the past decade.<\/p>\n \u2022 The district has already issued 1,000 pink slips, closed preschool programs and is slated to run out of cash in July. The board met Thursday to discuss possible school consolidations.<\/a><\/p>\n Reaction to Marking\u2019s email<\/p>\n \u2022 The board\u2019s executive committee called the email \u201can improper public airing of a skewed perspective\u201d and said it is looking into whether any laws were violated, but declined to comment on confidential closed session discussions.<\/p>\n \u2022 Teacher\u2019s union president Nikki Milevsky called Marking\u2019s email \u201ca misleading attempt to cover up fiscal mismanagement and rewrite history.\u201d<\/p>\n This report was produced with the assistance of a proprietary tool powered by artificial intelligence based on our own originally reported, written and published content. Before publishing, journalists reviewed this content in compliance with McClatchy Media\u2019s AI policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sacramento City Unified School District sign outside of the Serna Center on Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-286851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}