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The Redwood City School District continues to look for ways to tackle an ongoing budget crunch, as families and educators urge that services and positions directly impacting student learning be protected from the chopping block.
During an RCSD board study session Tuesday, Jan. 13, Superintendent John Baker assured families that the district is doing all it can to keep potential cuts “as far away from the classroom as possible.”
The session presented the board with a preliminary budget proposal showing $6.3 million in cuts and savings for the 2026-27 academic year through restructuring and reductions in services and positions at the district office and school sites.
The board is expected to receive final recommendations on the potential reductions and savings on Feb. 4.
For the district office, the proposal includes reducing 5.65 full-time equivalent (FTE) management positions and cutting costs in contracted special education services due to students no longer needing them or leaving the district. The adjustments at the district office would total $3,286,150.
At schools, the proposal includes reductions involving an administrator, teaching positions tied to declining enrollment, funding for guest teachers and staffing reviews in transitional kindergarten through eighth grade. These adjustments would save $3,009,700.
The proposed budget cuts are needed because one-time state and federal funds for pandemic-related relief have expired and districtwide enrollment continues to decline, Baker said during the meeting.
Enrollment currently stands at about 6,400 children, he said, but is projected to fall by more than 1,000 students by 2033–34.
The district – which years ago served 10,000 children – has “become a smaller organization (but) is still operating programs and services designed for larger student populations,” he said. “So we have to adjust ourselves according to (the current) number.”
Baker also pointed out that RCSD, which, as a community-funded or basic-aid district, primarily draws its revenue from local property taxes rather than getting a significant amount from the state, is not generating enough money “fast enough to keep up with the pace of our operational costs (to) meet the needs of our student services.”
To avoid going through a yearly budget-cutting process requires additional long-range planning, “not short-term fixes because we want to maintain our financial stability from this point,” Baker added.
During the meeting, RCSD board President David Weekly emphasized that the district is “not in this proposal cutting anything from music, art, PE, mental health or” what’s called Multi-Tiered Systems of Support – a framework that provides services tailored to each student’s individual needs and in a structured, consistent approach.
However, Weekly acknowledged that trimming guest-teacher positions “is going to impact the classrooms. That’s probably the closest thing to the classroom that’s in the set of cuts.”
RCSD spokesperson Jorge Quintana told the Pulse that the district has 12 full-time guest teachers – one for each school. They step in to lead a class at their campus when a regular teacher is out for training or other reasons.
But the budget-reduction proposal would reduce the guest-teacher position by half an FTE, Quintana said. That means one guest teacher would have to cover two schools.
Rather than staffing cuts, Roosevelt Elementary Principal Tina Mercer told the board during public comments that she could use coverage support in her administration when she has to be involved in meetings pertaining to an Individualized Education Program (IEP) – a legal document detailing the academic goals, services and accommodations specific to each special-need student.
“I just want to advocate for at least the TK-5 schools having some (administrative) coverage during the school year,” Mercer said. “Otherwise, if I look at my own school specifically, I’m looking at about 150 IEP meetings, which takes me out of doing my other roles for probably 250 hours per year – which is a lot of hours of not being able to be with students, be with our staff and so forth.”
During her public testimony, Hoover School resource center and special education teacher Araceli Flores-Mendoza also called for additional support, not reductions.
“At this time, our special-education students and the educators who serve them need more – more resources, more staffing and more support,” Flores-Mendoza said before the board. “Currently, we have three full-time (resource-center) teachers with very minimal aid support, which requires us to spread ourselves thin and limit the level of individualized guidance we know our students deserve.”
Orion Alternative parent Steven Jeuck expressed deep concern about the possibility of losing a guest teacher dedicated to his school, which houses the district’s Mandarin Immersion program for elementary students.
“Our guest teacher is a highly utilized staff member and bilingual,” Jeuck said, addressing the board. “Cutting this position would have negative impacts across our site. … We ask the school board (to take) an equitable perspective when considering cutting the guest-teacher position at Orion.”
The school has already sustained $270,000 in cuts but “grown our parent contribution significantly in response,” he added. “In spite of these cuts, our school showed improvements in nearly all categories,” including English-language arts and math.
“We need continued investment to maintain this trajectory,” he said.
The district has already implemented cost-saving measures totaling $6.6 million for the current school year.
To address its long-term financial picture, the district is studying whether to place a parcel tax measure on the June ballot.
This initiative “would cost property owners 17.5 cents per square foot of building space each year,” though parcels without buildings would see a flat $25 charge, Baker said in a message to the community on the district website. “This approach is designed to distribute the cost among different properties.”
The board still “needs to decide on several pieces” to determine the overall funding amount, Quintana told the Pulse.
A parents’ group is also exploring a community-initiated ballot measure as an alternative strategy to generate new district revenue.
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