The San Antonio Independent School District is cutting hundreds of staff positions as enrollment continues to decline, and the expiration of federal COVID-19 relief dollars signals grim financial headwinds for the next school year.
Superintendent Jaime Aquino said during a budget workshop over the weekend that the lack of new state funding in recent legislative sessions has put the district in a precarious position, leading to the job cuts at schools across the district.
“What we are … starting today is going to be one of the most challenging budget development processes that we have encountered,” Aquino said. “It’s important for the public to understand that our state leaders have chosen not to invest in the future of our state by denying our students the much-needed funding they deserve and essentially hindering their ability for a brighter future.”
Over the last three years, the district has received $100 million in funding from the federal government to help with COVID-related costs. Those funds expire this year, setting up SAISD and other districts for a historic fiscal cliff.
With the COVID relief funds, the district created hundreds of positions to support social-emotional development, mental health and college, career and military readiness along with positions focused on learning loss. While the district’s general funds will now pay some of those employees, other positions are being eliminated as the funds expire, according to district spokeswoman Laura Short.
“This funding was used to support schools in response to the challenges they faced as they responded to COVID,” she said in a statement. “In these cases, it was made clear from the outset that these roles were grant-funded for only three years.”
Multiple attempts to increase state funding during the last regular legislative session and special session stalled, and ultimately failed over efforts to tie teacher raises to policies that would allow public dollars to be used for private schooling. Aquino has said in the past, including on a recent podcast appearance, that he isn’t optimistic about more state funding in the future.
In a budget workshop over the weekend, district officials revealed that at least 216 positions will be affected, including:
- 77 high school intensive support positions, including college-bound advisors, family engagement specialists and academic deans
- 58 special education positions
- 40 “cohort of support” teachers
- 26 hall monitors
- 15 supplemental recovery positions
Beyond the positions affected by Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Funds expiring, the number of positions that will ultimately be affected by cuts has yet to be shared publicly or with the San Antonio Teacher’s Alliance, a union representing faculty and staff at the schools.
Short said the budget discussion has just started and is still being finalized.
But teachers at schools across the district have already reported that principals have told them that their positions will not be there next year, according to Alliance President Alejandra Lopez.
Short said that separately from the ESSER fiscal cliff, the district regularly adjusts staffing in response to changes in student enrollment at specific campuses.
“Each year we review our school staffing, comparing it to the expected student enrollment and campus needs, to determine the appropriate number of personnel needed in the coming year,” Short said. “This annual analysis is a standard part of our budgeting process, as it is in districts across the state.”
The district will work to place affected employees in other positions, including those that are available due to natural turnover. District officials did not respond to questions about whether employees losing jobs would be guaranteed other positions in the district.
In past years, the district administration and school board have worked to insulate classroom positions from potential cuts. Cuts from the central office in the last two fiscal years, made by consolidating jobs and freezing vacancies, added up to $22.5 million in budget savings. Campus budget cuts, which affected dozens of librarians and family engagement specialists this school year, made up another $1.2 million in cuts.
Despite those actions, however, SAISD adopted a budget last year with a deficit of $41.4 million, which was leveled out by some of the last remaining COVID relief dollars.
Some savings could help counter the unexpected costs, including the large number of vacancies across the district, which resulted in $13 million in excess revenue, $3.7 million from higher-than-expected interest rate returns on the district’s investments and one-time proceeds of $4 million from the sale of district property, according to the district’s budget workshop Saturday.
The district could also save money from the planned closures of 15 campuses next year. Recouped district bond funds from unfinished projects on those campuses saved $174 million so far, making up for higher costs for ongoing bond projects due to inflation. The district committed not to cut jobs as a result of the closures. It isn’t clear whether the recent cuts will affect those campuses.
This year, however, the district spent half a million dollars to support the so-called “right-sizing” process, according to a budget presentation from Saturday’s meeting.
2024 school year changes
The district said it has plans to continue the supports provided by the ESSER-funded positions in other ways, including the addition of roles to support college and career readiness including “C3 Coaches,” which will be funded by a $4.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
During the Saturday meeting, Johnny Vahalik, the district assistant superintendent for college, career and military readiness, said that the restructuring will maintain the district’s focus on preparing students for life after high school despite losing some positions.
“We had a lot of positions, especially in high school, being carried in ESSER,” he said. “So our plan was when we stepped back and looked at how this was going to adjust our schools, we decided to kind of refocus the strategy around a systems oriented thinking of how we take on roles to still hit our priorities.”
Each school will maintain one college-bound advisor, with the option of a second in addition to the new positions.
But the expiration of ESSER dollars is not the district’s only funding challenge.
Unexpected facility costs, including an estimated $2.5 million in repairs from the recent HVAC failure during a winter freeze, added to a deficit already over $41 million.
A court decision about special education and Medicaid funding in Texas led to an unexpected $5 million reduction in the district’s funding. High-cost medical claims also had an outsized impact on the district’s insurance costs as compared to earlier years, according to the Saturday budget presentation.
A recurring concern was also revisited by Theresa Urrabazo, the district’s chief of data operations and services, who said that funding took a significant hit when the attendance of enrolled students dipped below the district’s goal of 90% this year and enrollment projections fell short.
In Texas, school funding from the state is determined by average daily attendance.
“Anytime we don’t hit our enrollment projection, it affects the accuracy of our budget for that year,” Urrabazo told board members.
Lopez, the union leader, said the coming cuts are a mistake when the education sector continues to face churn and burnout, pointing to a recent survey by the Texas American Federation of Teachers, which found teachers across the state continue to consider leaving the field.
The survey, which had 3,274 respondents in January of 2024, found that 68.9% of educators surveyed report that they have considered leaving the profession in the past year, and 74.8% report experiencing burnout in the past 12 months.
Zeph Capo, the president of Texas AFT, said in a statement that the “educators are ringing the fire alarm” about the retention crisis.
Without concrete answers, Lopez said the situation in San Antonio will continue to cause concern across the district.
“The fact that they are already telling people creates a sense of uncertainty and anxiety for our members, in addition to just this overall sense of kind of destabilization at the campuses,” she said. “I do know that these are much higher numbers than we’ve seen in recent years due to a number of different factors that are impacting budgets this year.”
