Vallejo school board votes to close 3 schools, cut 120 staff positions

VALLEJO – The Vallejo City Unified School District Board of Education voted unanimously to close three elementary schools on Wednesday and cut about 120 full-time employee positions.

Highland, Pennycook, and Lincoln elementary schools will close at the end of this school year. The closures will affect roughly 1,000 Vallejo students. About 500 students currently attend Highland, and 400 students attend Pennycook, according to district data. Lincoln, a small school that only serves transitional kindergarten through third grades, enrolls about 100 students. It opened in the 1850s and is the oldest school in Vallejo.

The three impending closures come in addition to two other district schools that shuttered earlier this year. In February, the board voted to close Mare Island Health and Fitness Academy and Loma Vista Environmental Science Academy. The upcoming job cuts come after the district already cut 75 staff positions with the previous closures.

The closures and cuts come as the district struggles with a projected $10.9 million budget deficit. Superintendent Rubén Aurelio attributes the budget challenges and the need to close schools to declining enrollment, which has dropped about 18% from 2020 to 2025. The district relies on state funds based on its enrollment for the majority of its funding.

During meetings and town halls where community members and district leadership have discussed closures, Aurelio, along with members of the board, have expressed concerns about the district falling into state receivership if it doesn’t remain fiscally solvent. That already happened once in Vallejo. In 2003, the district faced bankruptcy and borrowed $60 million from the state, but lost control to make its own decisions. The district only recently gained full decision making power when it exited receivership in June. 

During Wednesday’s meeting, board President John Fox said that he didn’t take the decision to close schools lightly, and he knows people will be “hurt and unhappy” but that the district has to “live within its means” in order to “keep the district solvent so that the state does not bring us back into receivership.”

During the meeting, in which about 100 people attended and many were visibly distraught, three people spoke out against closures. Two people encouraged the board not to vote to shut down Federal Terrace Elementary, a school that the board had been considering closing. Citing Lincoln’s historical significance, Vallejo resident Clarence Martin encouraged the board to keep it open.

While few people spoke to oppose closures, the community had pushed back against them at committee meetings over the summer, and board meetings and town halls in the autumn. Teachers, parents and students regularly encouraged the board to consider other options to save money besides school closures. School community members from Federal Terrace, Pennycook, Steffen Manor, Lincoln and Cooper elementary schools regularly spoke during public comments to encourage the district not to close their schools. Members of Cooper Elementary’s school community distributed flyers, made T-shirts and put up signs around their campus discouraging the school’s closure.

During a committee meeting in July, Superintendent Rubén Aurelio recommended the district close three schools. He remained steadfast, repeating his recommendation in meetings and town halls several times since then. Some public speakers at meetings and town halls, who had discouraged the board from voting to close a specific school, also said they thought school closures in general might be necessary.

The decision to specifically close Highland elementary was unexpected. When the district announced Highland’s closure on Facebook Wednesday night, Vallejo resident Megan Marie Anderson expressed shock in a comment.

“This angers me,” Anderson wrote. “I literally just enrolled my child into Highland yesterday. She will start after winter break. What’s the point now?”

Aurelio had recommended the district close Lincoln, Pennycook and Cooper elementary schools, not Highland. During a meeting last week, Aurelio discouraged closing Highland.

“We’re not recommending Highland as a school for closure,” Aurelio said. “Because it is the largest of the schools we’re looking at.”

Aurelio said as a large school campus, Highland would easily be able to take in students from other shuttered schools.

Aurelio wasn’t alone in deprioritizing Highland’s closure. Over the summer, when a committee was tasked with ranking six schools in priority for closure, it placed Highland last on its list, citing its “unique geographic location.”

But the board had the final say with closures. While agreeing with Aurelio’s decision on closing Lincoln and Pennycook, the board chose to close Highland over Cooper. No board members discussed or explained their reasoning for closing Highland during the Wednesday meeting. But board members had expressed concerns with parking and traffic at Highland during meetings in the autumn, and had also noted that closing Highland would save more money for the district than closing other schools.

During a meeting in September, board director Latyna Young called drop off and pick up at Highland “a mess” due to its location on a one-way street. After Assistant Superintendent Ruben Fernandez outlined how much savings each potential school closure would save the district each year in a meeting last week, Fox noted that Highland’s closure would save the district the most. While Highland’s closure will save the district $650,000 per year according to the district’s estimates, Cooper’s closure would have only saved the district $400,000. 

Fox also said that he wanted to prioritize keeping schools open that were performing better. 

“Why wouldn’t I take the ones that aren’t having results and close those?” Fox said. “I don’t want to disrupt those schools that are showing results. We’re judged on results, just like any other business.” Cooper’s test scores in Math and English and Language Arts tests have significantly outperformed Highland’s over the last two years. Both performed below the state average during that time frame, although both have also shown growth. 

The district anticipates Pennycook’s closure will save $600,000 and Lincoln’s closure will save $300,000. In total, the district anticipates saving $1.55 million per year from closing all three schools.

Much like the school closures, the district plans to cut positions in order to save money. The district estimates that, by cutting about 120 full-time staff positions, and eliminating about 90 vacant full-time positions, it will save about $22 million.

While the district has estimated the total full-time positions it will cut, many workers in schools work part-time, and two half-time workers, for example, only make up one full-time position. The district’s figures don’t account for what proportion of these cuts will be part-time workers, so currently, it’s still unclear exactly how many people will lose their jobs.

California School Employees Association, the union which represents classified employees in Vallejo schools, such as office staff, custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, teachers assistants and other staff members who are generally paid lower than teachers and administrators, will have by far the most cuts at 65.5 positions. The other cuts include 18 managerial positions and 36 Vallejo Education Association positions, the union that represents teachers, nurses and counselors. 

Four members of the California School Employees Association, including Vallejo chapter President Kat Salas-Teitgen, questioned the district’s cuts specifically to classified positions.

“My members understand the need to right-size the district,” said Salas-Teitgen. “What we don’t understand and what we cannot accept is the notion that this be done on the backs of the people who are already the lowest paid yet among the most dedicated employees in this system.”

The board unanimously approved the proposed staffing cuts without any discussion. It wasn’t the first time this year classified employees were hit hardest by cuts. When the board cut 75 positions in February, about 47 of them were classified employees.

News of the closures and the staffing cuts has hit some classified employees hard. 

“I’m sick!,” Michelle Boot said in a Facebook comment on a post sharing news of the closures. “I work at Pennycook as the lunch lady. Not sure what my future holds now.”

Recent comments from Aurelio indicate that he hopes, following this most recent round of school closures, more closures won’t be necessary for the foreseeable future. 

Cuts, on the other hand, are a different matter. In October, Aurelio said he anticipates the district will cut 30% of its employees over the next three years. The most recent financial statement report from the district states that it “plans to achieve a balanced budget by the 2027-28 school year.”