Elk Grove Unified School District cutting 31 classified positions as funding ends
Thirty-one classified employees in the Elk Grove Unified School District will lose their jobs next school year as the district eliminates positions funded by a COVID-19 recovery grant, district officials and the union confirmed.
The Elk Grove school board earlier this month voted to eliminate, release or reassign the positions. Lisa Levasseur, a district spokesperson, said she did not have specific information about which school sites were affected.
The reductions for the 2026-27 school year, which begins in July, affected jobs across the district’s 73 campuses. The positions included library technicians, paraeducators, mental health therapists, computer training and support specialists, prekindergarten instructors, counseling and college and career technicians, family, school and community liaisons, program educators and assistants, school office assistants, job developers, project implementers, substance abuse prevention educators and student store technicians.
The cuts totaled 60.0388 full-time equivalent positions, though 31 employees were affected and 18.6825 positions were vacant. A full-time equivalent represents one employee working a 40-hour week.
A majority of the roles were funded through a grant the district received in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Levasseur said. The district serves more than 64,000 students.
The Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant provided more than $6.8 billion in one-time funds to districts statewide to “support academic learning recovery and staff and pupil social and emotional well-being,” according to the state. The funding began in the 2022-23 school year and was scheduled to run through 2027-28.
Amari Watkins, chief financial officer for EGUSD, said in a statement that there was not enough funding to continue all positions.
“All positions funded by LREBG were intended to expire by June 30, 2026, based on available funding,” Watkins said in the statement. “We anticipate using new and alternative funding to continue some positions through June 30, 2028.”
Rocio Galvan, the president of Elk Grove’s chapter of the California School Employees Association, which represents classified employees, said the district was transparent in communicating to people who were hired for these positions that the funding had an expiration date.
She said work has been done to move people from these positions into other positions in the district, though it is disappointing that these roles, especially ones advocating for students, will no longer exist.
“There was opportunity for Elk Grove to do things that we could have never imagined doing,” Galvan said. “Now that we’ve done it and not having it is kind of like a gut punch when we’re increasing salaries for seven school board members.”
The announcement came during the same board meeting in which trustees voted raise their own pay, increasing monthly compensation from a maximum of $750 to $3,000, with the potential to raise it to $4,500 based on student attendance.
Galvan criticized the timing of the raises, saying some classified employees earn as little as $1,800 per month.
“Morale among classified staff is low,” Galvan said at the meeting. “We’re struggling to recruit good people. We’re struggling to retain the people we have. Our teams are understaffed and overworked, asked to do more with less because the budget demands it. We do it because we care about the students, but we are tired.”
