TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — The Tucson Unified School District is weighing job eliminations and role combinations as it works to get rid of their budget deficit. The district said they would have a projected $27 million budget deficit by fiscal year 2030.
The TUSD board is set to vote tomorrow on part of the budget. For the upcoming school year, the district’s administration is recommending $10 million in cuts from its non-desegregation maintenance and operations budget.
To reduce approximately $4 million, Superintendent Dr. Gabriel Trujillo is asking every administrative department head to cut 7% from their budgets. That includes potentially cutting positions within his own office — among them the assistant superintendent and two directors.
"The community and our workforce should see that I'm willing to work with the smaller administration. I'm willing to share the pain," Trujillo said.
Trujillo cited several factors driving declining enrollment, which reduces the amount of funding flowing into the district, including families leaving the greater Tucson area for more affordable regions, declining birth rates, people older than 50 buying homes within TUSD's boundaries (and not having school-aged children living with them), the expansion of school vouchers, and rising costs of benefits and salaries for TUSD employees.
"Every single employee in our district matters. Every single position, no matter how far from the classroom ultimately contributes to supporting classroom teachers," Trujillo said.
Among the positions potentially on the chopping block are regional substitutes. Trujillo acknowledged the difficulty of those cuts. However, he said they would be able to take daily substitute jobs by calling their hotline everyday.
"Those subs can turn around and call in everyday and take jobs so they still have an opportunity to work everyday," Trujillo said.
Tucson Education Association President Jim Byrne said any cuts would hurt the functionality of the district.
"That's another person coming into a classroom filling a role that helps the important learning process," Byrne commented on how the regional substitutes help the district.
While Byrne does not represent regional substitutes, he does represent attendance technicians — another group that could be affected. The district is considering placing attendance techs at two elementary schools instead of one for smaller schools. High schools would not be affected because they take attendance differently.
"That means more work on the plate of those already overworked office staff members. So it's not a good thing for each individual school in terms of its functioning," Byrne said.
However, Trujillo said he’s confident that the district could work through those challenges.
"It's a smarter, more responsible use of our taxpayer-funded resources. We also believe that it'll still help us meet the need of our schools," Trujillo said.
The district is also closing their customer service center within operations which would eliminate 17 full time employee positions. 16 of those are currently filled. The district said other roles could also be eliminated or combined to reduce spending by thousands of dollars.
Tomorrow's board vote is just the first in what Trujillo said will be an ongoing conversation about the budget and consolidation.
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Andrew Christiansen is a reporter for KGUN 9. Before joining the team, Andrew reported in Corpus Christi, Texas for KRIS6 News, Action 10 News and guest reported in Spanish for Telemundo Corpus Christi. Share your story ideas with Andrew by emailing andrew.christiansen@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook, or Twitter.
