“I was taken back and appalled at the last special board meeting when (chairman) Omar Medina asked: ‘What does an office technician do (and) where does this person sit?’ and the person leading the presentation didn’t have an answer,” Sharp said. “These are your confidential personnel. These are the people you’ve been telling us since August, telling us you care about us, telling us we’re important.”

Classified personnel, which includes school front office staff, custodians and lunch service workers, is one of the remaining personnel units. Due to budget constraints, the increase has not been made yet.

All other key staff members received raises, including board trustees and regional office staff.

“How can you effectively decide whether to keep our jobs when you can’t even tell us where we sit in these offices?” Sharp said.

Like others in the public comment, he called on the district to make cuts to the regional office.

“That should be the first stop, rather than shutting down things that will directly impact your students,” Sharp said. “As a staff member, I would rather go through the tough times, get things done, and wait longer at the district level…instead of closing schools and reducing staff taking care of students.”

Later in the meeting, Morales said he was working to make the district office “more efficient” in response to requests from the Santa Rosa Teachers Association and undercover employees. This includes stretch technicians, assistants and other positions who will work across multiple departments.

After more than an hour of public comment, Medina spoke directly to attendees.

“Each of our schools is valuable and has a community,” he said. “But it’s not just one, two, three schools on the list; All schools are on the list… I don’t want to be in this position, but here we are. And we were not alone. “This situation is happening in all provinces.”

Superintendent Morales echoed Medina’s statements.

He said that our district is going through a critical period. “We face an urgent financial need to make significant cuts to maintain solvency. “The region has reached a point where… we can’t take this any further.”

With that, August began presenting the district’s financial plan.

Trustees had questions about expected cuts and distribution of funds, but ultimately unanimously approved the first draft of the financial plan.

August emphasized the importance of “extremely difficult decisions to come”, but stressed that without these decisions, a state takeover of the region would be disastrous and the region would take decades to recover.

August said the first point of conversation was around the district’s unrestricted fund balance, which are reserves that can be used for any financial need, usually emergencies.

The district plans to keep 3% of its total operating costs in this fund for the next three years. August called for cuts to shore up the funding pool.

“3% doesn’t even save us a week’s worth of payroll,” August said. “If we’re only aiming for 3 percent, we’re always going to be in a cycle of discounting. “We will never be at the point of planning expansion and ensuring stability.”

Another topic of conversation was the loss of funding resulting from the previous closure of Lawrence Cook Middle School, which caused students at that school to either attend the Cesar Chavez Language Academy. the dual-immersion private school in the same neighborhood or Comstock Hilliard Middle School in northwest Santa Rosa.

But because the CCLA process is comprehensive and Comstock’s alternative option is a traffic-congested commute, families leave the area during the middle school transition for the Cotati-Rohnert Park School District, which has a similar commute.

Trustee Alegria De La Cruz asked Lawrence Cook how much leeway the district has in making the application process easier for students who will attend.

“Considering that this happens, if the charter application process (where there aren’t a lot of kids in 7th and 8th grade) is so frustrating, I want to find a way to fix it,” De La Cruz said.

He also asked August to clarify the roles of the School Consolidation Advisory Committee and the Financial Stability Committee.

The school closures were decided last year by former Superintendent Anna Trunnell and approved by current board members. They determined and predicted at that time that at least one elementary school should be closed and stated that the closure of schools “must happen.”

During that process, the board voted to establish a committee comprised of teachers, parents and community members that will continue to meet until its recommendations are presented to the board in February.

August also spoke in more detail about the $11 million in cost savings required by closing schools.

When schools close, operating costs are not fully covered by the district. Approximately 40% of costs are saved by closing schools.

The district could work to “rehabilitate” the buildings by using them for district programs and turning them into profits instead of derelict buildings.

Examples include opening a childhood education center in a closed school or partnering with the city’s Recreation and Parks to use the building for its own programs. Both would cost the region little.

“Also, staff housing is a huge support from the state where we have the seed money,” August added.

The reality is that school closures will cause students to leave the district, resulting in further loss of funding.

The financial team will re-examine the first interim budget and provide more information based on the plan currently in the works following trustee approval.

Report For America fellow Adriana Gutierrez covers education and child welfare for The Press Democrat. You can reach her at [email protected].