A few months ago, South San Diego County’s largest elementary school district faced a bleak budgetary future.
Amid projections of multimillion-dollar deficits and declining reserves, Chula Vista Elementary School District trustees eyed painful cuts and administrators sent layoff notices to dozens of teachers and other employees.
Last month, the state of California came to the rescue.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s May revision to his annual budget proposal contained billions in added funding for school districts.
Coupled with targeted cuts approved by school board members earlier this year, the additional state funds enabled Chula Vista Elementary administrators to dial back cuts and some of their dire warnings about the district’s fiscal future.
On Wednesday, district trustees approved a new contract with teachers that gives them a one-time salary increase of 1.5 percent and raises the amount the district pays for teachers’ healthcare.
The district now will cover individual teachers’ entire health insurance costs and up to $23,200 per year for teachers with families.
If adopted by legislators later this year, the revised state budget would add nearly $3 million to Chula Vista Elementary’s $453 million general fund budget.
The proposed state budget also includes new benefits for teachers, restoration of post-Covid learning recovery funds, a five-year extension of funding for literacy coaches and new, ongoing funding for community schools that provide social service support to lower-income families.
The new funds enabled the district to shrink its current year deficit to $16 million.
A combination of retirements, resignations and internal fiscal adjustments also enabled the district to rescind layoff notices sent earlier this year to 41 teachers. Nearly a dozen school counselors and social workers also regained their jobs.
“We’re ecstatic,” said teachers union president Rosi Martinez of the district’s improved financial outlook. “We were very concerned about losing some of our members…We appreciate working for a district that is responsible, and a superintendent and school board responsible to keep the district [financially] solid.”
Martinez said she is especially excited about a provision in the proposed state budget that would create new ongoing funding for what are called community schools.
Community schools receive additional funds to hire staff and offer programs that encourage greater parent involvement and aim to remove financial and other barriers that often make it difficult for students from lower income families to succeed.
Chula Vista Elementary currently has 13 schools operating under the community schools model, including one I wrote about earlier this year.
That school, Lilian J. Rice Elementary in southwest Chula Vista, has used its community schools funds to hire a community coordinator, boost reading and math programs and provide sports, clubs and nutritional supports for students and their families.
Early results show the model helps keep kids in school and improves academic performance.
Martinez said she is “incredibly excited” about the new community schools funding.
“Moving from something that was grant-dependent to now being able to look at having that money be ongoing would allow more of our schools to tap into that funding,” she said.
Not all the financial news is positive in the district.
Despite the added state funds, the district still projects a roughly $13.6 million deficit in its upcoming 2026-27 general fund budget.
And it projects its economic uncertainty reserves will shrink by nearly $10 million over the next three years as funds from those reserves are used to backfill parts of the deficit.
Lurking behind it all is a force confronting all San Diego County school districts: declining enrollment.
A recent district budget presentation forecast the district could lose more than a thousand students over the next three years.
The presentation estimated the district’s average daily attendance could shrink from 19,772 to 18,604.
Ultimately, the district’s “budget is just a function of [the number of] students,” said district Trustee Francisco Tamayo. In California, school funding is tied to a district’s average daily attendance.
“Less students [equals] less money,” Tamayo said.
For now, though, district families and employees are breathing a sigh of budgetary relief.
“We feel very confident the district is in a good place,” Martinez said.
Chula Vista Government Overhaul Moves Foward
Last week, I wrote about a proposed ballot initiative in Chula Vista that would radically reshape the city’s government.
The initiative, sponsored by a deep-pocketed labor union representing construction workers, would replace the city’s current term limits with a new system giving elected officials three terms in office plus potentially unlimited additional terms, provided they wait a year before running for election again after their third term ends.
The measure also would raise city councilmembers’ salaries, including the mayor’s, and confer additional duties via two new city council committees addressing budgetary and public safety issues.
On Tuesday, a representative of Local 89 of the Laborers International Union of North America, the union sponsoring the ballot measure, presented the full text of the measure to the City Council and asked councilmembers to place the measure on the November ballot.
Councilmembers agreed to schedule a public discussion for a future City Council meeting, at which they also could vote to place the measure on the ballot.
The date of that public discussion has not been set yet.
Chula Vista Cops Weigh In on Chief
ICYMI, I wrote earlier this week about an ongoing messy dispute between Chula Vista City Hall and the city’s top cop, Police Chief Roxana Kennedy.
One unanswered question about the feud has been what rank-and-file officers think of it all.
On Tuesday, the officers appeared to side with the city.
Addressing the City Council, police union president David Martinez praised the City Council and City Manager Tiffany Allen and listed various ways life at the department has improved under Acting Police Chief Dan Peak.
“Under Chief Peak, the future of the Chula Vista Police Department is bright,” Martinez said.
In Other News
- The National City Council on Tuesday voted to end years of management instability in City Hall by hiring a new permanent city manager and city attorney. The new city manager is Doug Schultze, who previously served as city manager of Banning. The city attorney is Heidi Skinner, who formerly worked for the county of San Diego and in recent months has been serving as National City’s interim city attorney.
- South County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre is not up for re-election until 2028. But this evening, she is set to hold a fundraiser at a downtown San Diego wine bar to help pay off what campaign finance records show is at least $67,000 in unpaid bills from her race last year to fill a vacant seat on the County Board of Supervisors. Records show Aguirre spent close to $629,000 in the race.
- Attention Southwestern College alums with a sense of humor. The college’s alumni association will host a comedy night at 6:30 p.m. July 11 in the college’s performing arts center, featuring SWC alum Lourdes Ayon, whose jokes frequently riff off her binational Mexican and American heritage.
