SCUSD cuts about 26 mental health or nurse positions, nixes preschool job cuts
With the Sacramento City Unified School District facing a potential $113 million budget deficit, its board continues to face tough decisions.
On Thursday evening, the board voted 6-0 during a meeting at the Serna Center in Sacramento to eliminate about 26 mental health or nurse positions. It rejected a recommendation by staff to eliminate 19 preschool teaching or coordination positions.
The board had voted 4-0 at its Feb. 12 meeting, with three trustees absent, to distribute preliminary notices of layoffs in mid-March to employees on a list of over 400 positions. Some of the positions are currently vacant. The preliminary notices don’t guarantee layoffs.
The district has faced potential insolvency and state receivership amidst mounting budget woes. While the threat appears to have eased in recent weeks, the district still faces tough choices in coming months. A timeline at Thursday’s board meeting said final layoff notices will be confirmed May 7.
“The cuts we have to consider on this timeline will be painful,” board President Tara Jeane said during Thursday’s meeting.
What’s being cut
The positions the board voted to eliminate on Thursday had been pulled from discussion at the previous week’s meeting.
They included 4.5 school nurses, 3.5 school social workers, a counselor, a community school specialist and a combined social worker and clinician psychologist position, according to a proposed resolution included in the meeting’s agenda. All of these positions are vacant.
The board also approved cutting six combined social worker and clinician psychologist positions, 7.8 counselors and 1.4 school psychologists.
Trustee Taylor Kayatta praised the board’s decision to take an extra week to weigh the cuts and to engage in the process openly.
“We’re up here doing this in public, the Brown Act is a thing,” Kayatta said. “Sometimes it’s messy, but that’s because we’re making hard decisions under an incredible amount of stress.”
The board then considered eliminating 14 preschool teaching positions and five coordination positions, one of which is vacant.
“We as a board keep saying we’re willing to make the hard decisions so somebody else doesn’t have to,” Jeane said.
The motion to eliminate the positions failed 3-3. Jeane, Kayatta and Chinua Rhodes voted yes. Michael Benjamin, April Ybarra and Jasjit Singh voted no.
Board questions 20% cuts, layoffs, missing audit
SCUSD Interim Chief Business Officer Lisa Grant-Dawson provided an update on the district’s plan for achieving fiscal solvency, saying the district was now spending less money.
She also fielded questions from Jeane.
Jeane asked if the 20% budget cuts requested across the board would be sufficient. Jeane also said it “does feel more randomly picked than very strategically done. I’ve heard stories that it’s been inequitably applied in various places.”
Grant-Dawson acknowledged that “a percentage can definitely create that inequity because every department, every site is not built the same.” But she also noted that departments were free to figure out how to come up with the 20% in cuts.
Jeane asked SCUSD Interim Superintendent Cancy McArn about her plans for bringing forward recommended cuts. McArn said the district was looking at contracts that could be cut and had been talking with labor groups. McArn also acknowledged that budget conversations could have started sooner.
“We recognize that there was frustration around the lack of what felt like the lack of urgency in talking about this,” McArn said.
McArn’s remarks didn’t appear to completely ease tensions for the board.
“I’m not going to sit up here and be okay with us cutting people who get paid the least at the expense of folks who are getting paid the most not making the decision that they’re supposed to make,” Singh said, drawing applause from the room.
Kayatta said he was concerned that an external 2024-25 audit still hadn’t been received.
“If an auditor is this late, generally, not a good sign,” Kayatta said.
‘This budget crisis was not unexpected’
Several speakers during public comment spoke against funding cuts, including the closure of the Children’s Center at Leonardo da Vinci TK-8 School.
Katerina Robinson, who said her two children attend the center, noted that it was consistently over-enrolled and that parents paid higher tuition for it than certain other programs.
“I’m here because when I told my daughter that the facility was going to close potentially at the end of the year, she cried and she told me, ‘Where am I going to go?’” Robinson said. “And I didn’t have an answer for that.”
Sequoia Elementary School Principal Cindy Hollander, speaking on behalf of the union that represents school administrators, criticized the board’s vote the previous week to eliminate 12 central office positions.
“It is impossible to balance our district’s budget on the backs of central office administrators,” Hollander said.
Hollander listed some services that could cease due to cuts, such as middle school Mathletes competitions and some services related to Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs.
“This budget crisis was not unexpected,” Hollander said. “It was entirely avoidable.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
