CCUSD prepares to eliminate mental health and arts positions

In a 3-2 vote at Tuesday night’s meeting, the Culver City Unified School District Board of Education approved the final preliminary layoff notices for the 2026-27 school year. The last round, covering two mental health counselors, the District Arts Coordinator, and the Frost Technical Director, followed intense deliberations and public outcry spanning several weeks and two Board of Education meetings.

Although this included one fewer counselor than the initial notice discussed on March 3, several board members remained uneasy with the reductions, even as they faced a strict deadline with significant consequences looming.

These position eliminations are meant to serve as the final piece of the Second Interim Report for the 2026-27 school year budget due Friday, which is submitted as part of the annual budget approval process to the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE).

While the direction provided at the original deliberations on classified layoffs for the 2026-27 school year directed District staff to present an alternative layoff proposal that excluded these mental health counselors, the need to cut additional positions became apparent upon further analysis.

Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Santha Rajiv explained Tuesday night that layoffs from the original two resolutions, which included 15 certificated teachers and six classified workers, had a slightly smaller effect on the District’s expenditures than previously expected. While Rajiv’s office predicted the reductions approved at the March 3 meeting would save $1.9 million, the actual savings ended up slightly lower, prompting the addition of the Arts positions to the resolution Tuesday night.

“Now, we know the names and the impacted positions, so when we cluster it out, it [saves around $1.7 million],” Rajiv said of the reductions. “With the change in the number, now we need $634,000 more [in cuts], so that’s why those positions were added.”

The need to cut an additional $134,000 on top of the original $500,000 left after the March 3 resolutions led to adding the District Arts Coordinator and Frost Technical Director to the list, while keeping the three mental health counselors. Superintendent Dr. Alfonso Jiménez assured the community that Culver City High School’s Academy of Visual and Performing Arts would remain intact, but speakers advocating for the current District Arts Coordinator, Heather Moses, said her loss would cause significant harm to the AVPA and Arts programs throughout CCUSD.

As they did in the previous meeting, student representatives on the Board also gave preferential votes — which are noted by the board but do not count in the final motion — and also reiterated the importance of Moses and Frost Technical Director JD Sargent to the District’s theater program and the AVPA.

“By voting yes on this resolution, you are agreeing to take away a key piece of what makes all the AVPA and Theater Programs work,” a statement from student representative Alexia Prieto said. “By losing them, CCUSD will lose a part of the reason students want to come to the District in the first place.”

“AVPA has changed the lives of people, and without [Sargent and Moses], this program will lose some of its life,” student representative Jordan Kang said. “These are not people who can simply be replaced.”

The question of why the District Arts Coordinator and Frost Technical Director were chosen over other positions was also raised by Kang, who called their proposed layoffs "outrageous." While Rajiv and her team considered other administrative options to cover the additional cost, the salaries were simply not enough to secure the relief needed to pass the Second Interim Report.

The District faced tight deadlines to submit the Second Interim Report and layoff notices, both due March 15. The date was moved up this year to March 13, since March 15 falls on a Sunday. After this, no additional layoffs can be considered for the next school year.

Board Member Lindsay Carlson did not want to make these cuts, but argued that the circumstances were forcing her and other Board Members' hands. She lamented the choices being forced upon the Board for the upcoming school years, but listed previous expenditures from earlier iterations of the body she felt were wasteful and contributed to the District’s current predicament.

“A phrase that former (United States Vice President Kamala Harris] relayed from her mother during the last election was, ‘You exist in the context of all that you all in which you live, and all that came before you,’” Carlson said, “and the Board right now also exists in the context of that in which we live and what came before some of us.”

Another key factor in this conversation is Governor Gavin Newsom’s withholding of Proposition 98 funds owed to local education authorities. As reported on March 3, CCUSD is owed nearly $7.7 million from the state over the past two school years, which could have prevented these recent cuts.

Given the current circumstances, Rajiv said there was room to remove one of the positions from the list and still submit the Second Interim Report with a Positive Certification, but no more than that. Board Members, particularly Board President Stephanie Loredo, spoke of the need to avoid potential consequences that could result from not making these cuts and consequently submitting a report without Positive Certification.

“I cannot hand over our fiscal direction to the state,” Loredo said. “I respect my colleagues in creating their boundaries, but if we lose our ability to set fiscal direction...anything that's deemed above and beyond state mandates is on the table.”

While the Board ultimately moved forward with most of the cuts proposed Tuesday night, out of a necessity to act and a lack of presented options, many board members showed hesitancy. Among the key points made in defense of the District Arts Coordinator was the position’s role in grant funding, with Board Member Andrew Lachman noting that Moses has been a key contributor to bringing millions of dollars in grants to the District.

“The total value of grants over the last three years is approximately $2.5 million,” Lachman said of Moses’ financial contribution.

One of two board members to vote against the resolution on Tuesday, Vice President Brian Guerrero argued that both the District Arts Coordinator and the Technical Director of the Frost were involved in too many student interactions and echoed similar arguments to Lachman: that the District Arts Coordinator pays for itself through its work.

“We can absolutely revisit that arrangement, and we can reevaluate the roles,” Guerrero said, “but pulling the rug out from under that would betray 20 plus years of collaboration and one of the pillars of what makes CCUSD special.”

However, the need to retain mental health counselors was also pressing, with the hardline stance several board members took at last week’s meeting serving as the catalyst for these discussions. Guerrero was one of the Board Members who suggested removing the mental health counselors from the notice list at the previous meeting, and was still hesitant to cut multiple counselors on Tuesday night.

But one of the primary reasons the District faces its current financial circumstances is the use of one-time state funding related to the COVID-19 pandemic to create new positions that incur ongoing costs. These positions, which include some mental health counselor positions, are now paid for by the District, Guerrero and other board members noted.

Guerrero was still uncomfortable with the idea of cutting down on mental health counselors, but was willing to budge from an all-or-nothing stance based on information he had gathered.

“Having spent the last week and time before that talking to people who interact with these positions and looking at things like caseloads and duties, I could support reducing the number of mental health counselor positions by one and distributing those responsibilities among the remaining five,” he said. “But I cannot go any lower than that.”

As he did last week, Board Member Triston Ezidore was deeply concerned about the specific plan for how the duties of the eliminated positions would be absorbed by the remaining staff, particularly regarding the mental health counselors. The increased caseload and overall burden placed on the remaining counselors in the initial proposal would lead to a reactive model, focusing on students in crisis rather than using a preventive lens.

Ezidore argued that this approach was not conducive to success and pointed out that students from disadvantaged social classes will bear the brunt of this decision. He feared the lifelong consequences of removing these services, leading him to a position similar to Guerrero's.

“If we are proposing to remove any more than one mental health counselor, I would be unable to look at myself in the mirror,” he said.

The District will not have to make these eliminations permanent until May 15, and some of these positions could be removed from consideration if the District can find more revenue. Votes made Tuesday night were not the end of the story, Lachman argued, and called his yes vote on the resolution “a necessary first step in a process” to help restructure the Arts program, citing code and compliance issues as reasons it would benefit the District.

“COVID has changed a lot of things, and we need to adapt to that,” he said. “But that does not mean that we should try to take away from our investments in one of our strongest programs that makes the school district special.”

The original motion included three counselors along with the Arts positions, but Lachman amended that motion to strike one of the mental health counselors from the list. That final motion passed 3-2, with Vice President Guerrero and Board Member Ezidore dissenting.

The Board Meeting closest to the May 15 deadline, the last opportunity the Board will have to finalize these layoffs, is May 12. The full list of positions potentially being eliminated for the 2026-27 school year are as follows:

This matter could also be finalized at earlier Board Meetings, or a Special Meeting similar to the one held March 3 could be called to focus on the finalization of layoffs. The full 2026 meeting schedule can be found here.