![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Natera_AfterschoolProgram_Washington_250515_14.jpg\")
Students work on yearbook layout during the after-school program at Washington Elementary School on May 15, 2025. All nine program coordinators received layoff notices in the last two years. Credit: Ximena Natera, Berkeleyside\/CatchLight Local <\/p>\n
In March of last year, Kimberly Wright, coordinator of Willard Middle School\u2019s after-school program, received word that the school district was considering eliminating her job as it sought to plug a nearly $8 million budget deficit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wright, a Berkeley native working in the district since 2018, said it was \u201cextremely stressful.\u201d She worried how she\u2019d stay in her home. Colleagues said they were struggling to sleep, joining therapy groups to cope, going to the grocery store less and the food bank more, donating plasma to make ends meet and searching for new jobs.<\/p>\n
After a two-month limbo, Wright\u2019s job was spared. District leaders decided to push tough financial cuts into the future, with most layoff notices<\/a> ultimately rescinded.\u00a0<\/p>\n But this March, Wright\u2019s after-school role was again on the chopping block.\u00a0<\/p>\n And after last week\u2019s school board meeting, Wright learned that while most of the 350 layoff notices issued this year<\/a> were being rescinded, her job was among 21 the district did not immediately have a plan to save. All now could lose their jobs at the end of the school year if the district can\u2019t identify additional resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe really appreciate all of the support we received from families reaching out to the board members, but I just know that it\u2019s going to be \u2014 I\u2019m getting emotional talking about it \u2014 really kind of sticky as we move forward,\u201d Wright told Berkeleyside after the board meeting.<\/p>\n Layoff notice cycle stems from misalignment between state and district budget timelines<\/p>\n California law requires school districts to notify employees of potential layoffs by March 15<\/a> each year and issue final notices by May 15. The early timeline is meant to give staff time to request hearings or seek other work, and to force districts to publicly analyze budgets and justify proposed cuts.<\/p>\n The mandate dates back to the 1970s, when districts were funded primarily through local property taxes rather than state allocations. In 2022, Assembly Bill 438 extended the March 15 layoff\u2011notice requirement<\/a> to permanent support staff. BUSD won\u2019t know its actual budget until late summer, after the state finalizes its own spending plan, leaving districts to make staffing decisions months before they know what they can afford.<\/p>\n Complicating matters, school districts like BUSD are also being squeezed by expiring COVID-19 relief grants, state cost-of-living-adjustments that don\u2019t keep up with rising expenses, and delayed cuts from last year catching up to them<\/a>, according to Sara Hinkley<\/a>, the California program manager for UC Berkeley\u2019s Center for Cities and Schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRegardless of how early districts begin their own planning, they\u2019re not going to know until July how much money they\u2019re actually going to get from the state,\u201d Hinkley said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of evolving uncertainty and March 15 sits in this weird spot in the middle.\u201d<\/p>\n Because the state and district budget timelines don\u2019t align, districts end up \u201cflying blind\u201d each year and often \u201covercompensate\u201d by issuing notices based on worst\u2011case scenarios, Hinkley said.\u00a0<\/p>\n But for employees like Wright, caught in a cycle of often-rescinded layoff notices, the routine can feel inhumane.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should be capable of coming up with a solution so that we don\u2019t have to go through this every year,\u201d Wright said in a recent interview. \u201cSo that I can build job security and be able to rest my head at night knowing that, yes, I am going to have a job, yes, I\u2019m going to be able to pay my bills.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Yearly layoff notice cycle is emotionally draining and leads to burnout<\/p>\n Hinkley said most districts generally feel as though they \u201cdon\u2019t have a choice but to budget responsibly,\u201d which means preparing for cuts and staff reductions. But she noted that morale and retention problems tend to surface in districts that repeatedly rely on this cycle.<\/p>\n Public education staff have described the yearly layoff cycle as emotionally draining<\/a>, saying that the constant threat of losing their jobs leaves them anxious and worried about their livelihoods. Although March 15 notices haven\u2019t been widely studied in labor research, job insecurity is repeatedly identified as a major contributor to burnout<\/a> among educators.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a mess with all of us,\u201d Ana \u201cAnita\u201d Zamudio, the Sylvia Mendez Elementary after-school bilingual coordinator, told Berkeleyside. \u201cWe fought so hard last year, and we had this momentous victory where we got to keep our jobs. You still have that hope, but you also know that, \u2018OK, this might be it.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Zamudio, who has worked in BUSD for about three years, said she is the district\u2019s only bilingual Spanish\u2011speaking coordinator. She said her placement at Sylvia Mendez is ideal because the school serves as a magnet for all native Spanish-speaking families in BUSD.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of us are trying really hard to keep doing that work, and it\u2019s kind of hard to plan your life around that when you\u2019re at the mercy of the board,\u201d she said. The budget process, Zamudio added, is \u201ctraumatizing\u201d and discourages talented people from working in public education.<\/p>\n Daniel Brownson, a clerical assistant at the Berkeley High School College and Career Center, was laid off last year from a similar district office role. He\u2019s been with BUSD since 2019 and has remained employed because his current position opened after a voluntary resignation.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t count on that again,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m trying not to let it get to me because I\u2019ve got my job responsibilities, but I\u2019d be lying if I said it wasn\u2019t a big weight on my shoulders.\u201d<\/p>\n At the end of last week\u2019s board meeting, Brownson was still unsure whether his job was on the line. Two days later, he received an email confirming that he\u2019d been spared.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to describe the relief of not having to look for a job in an economy that\u2019s quite frankly terrible,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brownson lives in a studio apartment in the East Bay and told Berkeleyside he wasn\u2019t sure unemployment benefits would have covered his basic expenses. Half his paycheck goes to rent and bills.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy position is fine, but I\u2019m still worried about the other people on the list. I don\u2019t want them to get laid off either,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s really aggravating that those of us who have the least say in the district\u2019s finances are the ones who always have to pay the price.\u201d<\/p>\n Wright said she puts on a courageous face for students and then goes home and wonders whether she\u2019ll be able to afford rent in a few months. Although the school board\u2019s layoff resolution reduces the cuts to nameless titles, Wright said it\u2019s \u201chard to separate the people who have made a commitment to serve the youth of Berkeley\u201d from the roles.<\/p>\n She said the after-school program generates revenue for service costs and coordinators\u2019 salaries, \u201cbut yet once again this year we\u2019re still on the chopping block.\u201d Wright said some coordinators could be demoted to aftercare specialists or other roles, but she doesn\u2019t want to leave her position.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to stay with the Willard community, that\u2019s how I got into the field,\u201d Wright said. \u201cI want to keep working with youth to give back to my community.\u201d<\/p>\n “*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students work on yearbook layout during the after-school program at Washington Elementary School on May 15, 2025. All…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[35779,6765,2465,2466,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-317528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-berkeley-school-board","tag-berkeley-unified-school-district","tag-home-highlight","tag-home-lead","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317528","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=317528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"More](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778867597_726_full.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_9599-1-2560x1665.jpg\")
Members of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) Local 21, including Ana Zamudio (center), spoke in support of after-school coordinator roles at a May 2025 board meeting. Credit: Vanessa Arredondo\/Berkeleyside<\/p>\n