Thousands of California school employees have received preliminary pink slips in recent weeks as districts scrabble to close budget gaps caused by falling enrollment and rising costs. Most went to school administrators and classified school staff, such as clerks, administrative assistants and paraeducators.

Districts were complying with a  them to send preliminary pink slips by March 15 to any employee who could potentially lose their job before the beginning of the next school year. Many of the notices are withdrawn by May 15 — the last day final layoff notices can be given — as districts make decisions about seniority. 

This year the layoffs have taken a dramatic turn as district leaders increasingly target classified and central office staff to balance budgets.

School districts have lost both average daily attendance funding, due to declining enrollment, and federal Covid dollars. At the same time, districts are paying more for pensions, health care, supplies and special education. 

“You have some large school districts and even some mid-sized and smaller school districts that are in complete financial crisis right now, and on the verge of insolvency or going into receivership,” said Troy Flint, chief information officer for the California School Boards Association. “When the deficit is so great you almost have to make hatchet-type cuts.”

District offices in the crosshairs

District staff are being targeted by some districts. In Sacramento City Unified, everyone working in the district office, including the interim superintendent, was issued a pink slip.  and are also planning to make major cuts to their central offices. 

“The board directive, ever since we declared the deficit, has been pretty clear: Whatever cuts we have to make, keep them as far away from the classroom as possible,” said Brian Heap, Sacramento City Unified’s chief communications officer. 

District officials can’t say how many employees at the Serna Center – Sacramento City Unified’s headquarters – will ultimately lose their jobs until they complete a plan to restructure the office, Heap said.

“We have to have somebody running payroll. We have to have somebody in the business office. We have to have somebody in our academic office,” Heap said. “But what does that look like? That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

Sacramento City Unified officials have announced they will send layoff notices to 800 employees, most who are classified employees, to help reduce a $134 million budget deficit.

“I’m certainly nervous,” said Heap, who also received a pink slip. “I mean, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.”

The Los Angeles Unified in February to issue 3,200 layoff notices, including 657 to central office staff and other centrally funded classified positions. The layoffs, expected to actually result in 650 lost jobs, are estimated to save the district about $250 million. The district is facing an $877 million deficit next school year and $443 million the following school year, according to board materials.

Oakland Unified could  of its central office staff along with counselors, case managers, attendance clerks, community school managers and other support staff to make up $21 million of an estimated $103 million deficit, according to media reports. The to issue a total of 421 preliminary layoff notices and reduce the hours of 144 employees, according to Oaklandside.

Nonteaching jobs often cut first

Classified staff are often targeted for layoffs for practical and political reasons, Flint said.

“They [districts] try to concentrate layoffs among classified staff and administrative personnel simply because teachers have the most direct impact on student experience and academic achievement, and because teachers — as the school employees who are most well known to parents and the community — generally are the most sympathetic profession in the education field,” Flint said.

The California School Employees Association, which represents about 240,000 of the state’s K-12 classified school support staff, reported that at least 2,700 pink slips had been issued to its members by the state’s March 15 deadline. An additional 519 members received notices that their hours would be reduced and another 254, with jobs funded by federal dollars, were given 60-day layoff notices, according to a union report issued on March 6. 

Districts should make sure they have cut every possible expense before they start removing staff from school campuses, said CSEA President Adam Weinberger, who works in the Perris Union High School District in Riverside County. 

“When classified employees are laid off, students lose more than services; they lose trusted adults in their lives — bus drivers, educators, custodians and office staff who build relationships with our students. And those connections are essential to a safe and supported learning environment,” Weinberger said.

California school boards also approved layoff notices for administrative staff and workers represented by other unions, including members of the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 50,000 classified school employees in California districts including Sacramento City Unified. SEIU officials could not be reached to provide information about the number of members who received layoff notices.

Teachers did not get off unscathed

Even with efforts to shield teachers from layoffs, more than 1,900 pink slips were sent to members of the California Teachers Association by March 13, according to the union. The union represents teachers, librarians, school healthcare workers and school counselors. Last year about  received notices.

The pink slips are being issued at the same time that many bargaining units of the CTA and other unions are negotiating with their school districts for new contracts, most asking for higher salaries and improved benefits.

San Diego Unified approved a contract with its teachers early this year that prohibits the district from laying off teachers or other certificated staff for the 2026-27 school year. Instead, the district sent layoff notices to 133 classified school support staff, according to the CSEA.

San Diego Unified board member Sabrina Bazzo said she is proud of the decision not to cut teachers, saying it’s not what is best for students.

There are still many districts laying off large numbers of teachers, as well as classified support staff.

According to the CSEA, Long Beach Unified officials planned to send pink slips to 515 teachers and other credentialed staff, 15 to managers and 54 to support staff. Santa Clara Unified planned to send pink slips to 113 credentialed staff and 49 to classified workers. Antioch Unified approved a resolution reducing its credentialed staff by 104 positions and its classified staff by at least 193 positions, according to a union report.

Pasadena Unified indicated it had also issued 161 pink slips to its credentialed employees and 240 to classified school support staff.

“The reductions are significant and affect every school and department in our district,” said Pasadena Superintendent Elizabeth Blanco in a statement. “We are living within our fiscal reality, as difficult as it is, to protect student learning, the district’s long-term ability to serve future generations, and local control.”

Annual ritual causes anxiety

Many have called the annual ritual disruptive to schools and demoralizing to the employees who receive them.

“Our members are working paycheck to paycheck, and they’re looking for stability,” Weinberger said. “I know we have many members that get one every year and, then they’re rescinded and that creates instability in their lives.”

Eventually, those employees begin to look for other, more stable, jobs to ensure they can provide for their families, he said.

EdSource reporter Mallika Seshadri contributed to this report.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is weighing layoffs that could reshape classrooms across the nation’s second-largest school district. 

The district’s board at next week’s meeting is expected to decide whether to cut jobs, as it faces a projected $191 million deficit in the 2027-28 school year if it keeps spending at its current pace. The deficits in LAUSD and other districts are driven largely by the loss of Covid relief funds, declining enrollment and rising costs.

Meanwhile, labor unions throughout the state are pushing many districts for pay raises and other changes, such as increased health care contributions in their next contracts.

“Where you need to cut then is the classroom,” he said. “Because you need fewer classrooms, you need fewer teachers, fewer aides, fewer of folks that are at the sites directly serving kids.”

Los Angeles Unified is not alone among California’s school districts facing financial pressures. The  must close a deficit or face state receivership.  plans to implement job cuts to address its budget shortfall. 

“Large and small districts, urban, suburban and rural alike, are experiencing similar constraints,” reads an open  from superintendents of eight California districts, demanding the state restructure the way it funds schools. “When nearly every school system in California is facing the same challenges, it is clear that the issue is not isolated decision-making, but the sustainability of the funding model itself.” 

The superintendents who sent the letter, including LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, cited ongoing challenges, such as enrollment declines.

LAUSD’s enrollment declined more than 3% to 389,000, down from roughly 402,500 between the 2024-25 and 2025-26 academic years. That outpaced both the state and country, according to a at January’s Committee of the Whole meeting. 

About 90% of LAUSD’s budget is spent on personnel. Fine said that with so much of the money being spent on staffing, it would be nearly impossible to balance the budget on the remaining funds. 

“Our priority will be to protect students, protect programs, protect schools, and, to the extent possible, protect workforce,” Carvalho said at a Roundtable discussion with reporters in late January. “And within that priority, the protection of workforce begins with school sites. That is the balance that we want to establish, leading to the necessary fiscal solvency that we must continue to observe.” 

If LAUSD moves forward with job cuts, laid-off employees would be notified by March 15, per state law.

Weighing in the potential cuts, LAUSD is expecting a $191 million deficit for the 2027-28 academic year, though several factors are at play, including the final governor’s budget. The district also said it plans to move forward with roughly $150 million in reductions to its central office. 

The current fiscal challenges come after two years of diminishing reserves to help replenish a multi-billion-dollar deficit. While the district teacher’s union has pointed to $5 billion in reserves as of July, LAUSD is expecting to burn through it in three years. 

“The danger in just trimming 5% here, 10% there is it leaves you sometimes with incomplete programs,” Fine said. “It may leave you with the inability to actually turn things into practice.” 

The school board was originally expected to vote on the layoffs Tuesday, but postponed its regular meeting to Feb. 17 to allow for better preparation and engagement. The meeting’s comes after LAUSD unions issued a  asking that the vote be delayed and presented instead at a stand-alone meeting. 

Ongoing labor actions 

The discussion of layoffs comes as United Teachers Los Angeles, or UTLA, the union representing roughly 35,000 teachers,  a strike if a labor agreement isn’t reached. Meanwhile, SEIU Local 99, which represents roughly 30,000 workers, including special education assistants, cafeteria workers and custodians, is in the midst of a strike authorization vote. 

Before mediation began with UTLA in January, LAUSD said its bargaining proposals would cost $4 billion over a three-year contract, while SEIU Local 99’s would cost $3 billion through 2027-2028. 

LAUSD’s most recent  to SEIU Local 99 would increase wages by 13% over the next three years — starting with a 10% increase this year. Before mediation, the district offered UTLA a 4.5% raise and 1% bonus over two years. 

UTLA says that isn’t enough. With Los Angeles’ high cost of living, teachers are struggling financially, the union says. A showed that money is particularly important for Gen Z Black and Latino teachers in the district; a quarter of whom said they would leave their careers in education in search of a higher-paying job.

“I’m a third-year teacher. I have a master’s degree from UCLA, which is the premier education school in the country, and I’m still living paycheck to paycheck. And I’m still unable to even think about one day owning a home,” said Jon Paul Arciniega, a 29-year-old social studies teacher at Edward R. Roybal Learning Center in the Westlake area.  

“I still live at home,” Arciniega said. “And if I want to think about things like getting my own place, starting a family, buying a home, right now, all of that seems untenable.” 

Uncertainty ahead 

Sandy Meredith, a psychiatric social worker covering 42 district schools, said she hopes a strike won’t be necessary, both because of the financial strain it would place on colleagues like Arciniega and because schools play a critical role in students’ daily safety. 

But at the same time, she said they’re struggling to support students — 20% of whom require mental health services — without the district providing the support and wages they see as critical to their success. She expressed frustration with the size of the district’s reserves, particularly when teachers and staff like her pay out of pocket to provide basic resources, such as toilet paper, for students. 

“I feel like I’m on an airplane,” she said, “and I’ve been told ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t give you a mask to put on first. But go ahead and take care of the child.’ ” 

Strikes are nothing new in Los Angeles Unified. UTLA last went on strike in 2019, leading to a historic  with 6% pay raises, smaller class sizes and investments in community schools. Four years later, in 2023, SEIU Local 99 went on strike, which resulted in a 30% wage increase. 

But teachers and staff say this year comes with much higher stakes. 

Members of UTLA’s leadership say educators and school staff play a bigger role beyond the school walls.  

“We’re dealing with families’ anxieties. Are they not being able to come to school because of their housing insecurity? Is there trauma with this addition of the ICE raids? There’s concerns about safety,” said Margaret Wirth, a pupil services and attendance counselor who supports all of LAUSD’s Region South. “Is my child safe? For the child, is my parent safe? There’s a lot of different factors that make everything more heightened.”

Pupil service and attendance counselors like Wirth help reduce chronic absenteeism. She said layoffs will mean her caseloads will increase. 

But at the same time, Fine said if a district is going to move forward with layoffs, the earlier, the better.  

“The earlier you cut, the better off you are, and you’re also not dangling this black cloud over your staff and the community,” Fine said. “You get the discussion done, you forecast your gap right, and you make a decision on how to close that gap all at once, and everybody knows what the plan is.” 

This was originally published on .

LAUSD’s chief financial officer in an interview last week said declining enrollments and the end of pandemic relief funds have forced the district to take cost-cutting measures.  

Schools have already been notified of how much they will have to cut from their budgets. The cuts will go into effect starting in August. 

LAUSD officials in June had predicted a $1.6 billion deficit for the 2027-28 school year. But an updated version of the budget  last week eliminates the deficit by using reserve funds plus cost-cutting measures over the next two years. 

The planned cuts to school budgets will begin in the 2026-27 school year, with school consolidations and staffing reductions planned for the following school year, said LAUSD Chief Financial Officer Saman Bravo-Karimi. 

“We have fewer students each year, and in LAUSD that’s been the case for over two decades,” Bravo-Karimi said. “That has a profound impact on our funding levels. Also, we had the expiration of those one-time COVID relief funds that were very substantial.”  

The district recently contracted with the consulting firm Ernst and Young to create models for closing and consolidating schools. While school officials wouldn’t say which schools or how many would be closed, the district has clearly been shrinking. 

Enrollment last year fell to 408,083, from a peak of 746,831 in 2002. Nearly half of the district’s zoned elementary schools are half-full or less, and 56 have seen rosters fall by 70% or more. 

Bravo-Karimi said in the current school year the district will spend about $2 billion more than it took in from state, local and federal funding. The trend of overspending is expected to continue next year and the year after that, he said.

The district’s board in June approved a three-year budget plan that included a $18.8-billion budget for the current school year. The plan delayed layoffs until next year, and funded higher spending in part by reducing a fund for retirees’ health benefits. 

According to , the district will save:  

• $425 million by clawing back funds that went unused by schools each year 
• $300 million by reducing staffing and budgets at central offices 
• $299 million by cutting special funding for schools with high-needs students
• $120 million by cutting unfilled school staffing positions
• $30 million by consolidating schools  
• $16 million by cutting student transportation 

Bravo-Karimi said the district gets virtually all of its money through per-pupil funding from the state. Since enrollment in the district has fallen steadily for decades, and then sharply since the pandemic, funding is down significantly, he said.

Most zoned L.A. elementary schools are almost half empty, and many are operating at less than 25% capacity. Thirty-four schools have fewer than 200 students enrolled; a dozen of those schools once had enrollment over 400.     

The drops have prompted LAUSD leaders to talk about closing or combining schools, a controversial step that other big U.S. cities  or considering. 

Bravo-Karimi said the district would assess the needs of communities and the conditions at local schools before it makes any decisions about school closings or consolidations. 

“That process needs to play out before any decisions are made about potential consolidation of school facilities,” he said.

Bravo-Karimi said other factors, including ongoing negotiations with labor unions, and changes to state funding, will further impact the district’s budget in the coming months. 

Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab and Research Professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, said the cuts planned for LAUSD are “relatively mild” compared to overall size of the district’s budget and cuts being considered at other  and the rest of the country. 

“I don’t think the people in the schools are going to notice that there’s a shrinking of the central office or that they’re using reserves,” said Roza. “Unless you’re one of the people who loses their transportation or if you’re in one of the schools that gets closed.” 

But, Roza said, many of the cuts taken by LAUSD can only be made once, and the district still faces profound changes as enrollments continue to fall and downsizing becomes more and more necessary. 

“This really should be a signal to families,” said Roza of the planned cuts in the district’s latest budget. “After several years of really being flush with cash, this is not the financial position that LA Unified is going to be in moving forward.” 

LAUSD Board Member Tanya Ortiz-Franklin, who represents LAUSD’s District Seven, which includes neighborhoods such as South L.A., Watts and San Pedro, said the district will work to shield kids from the impact of budget cuts. 

But, Ortiz-Franklin said, the district hired permanent staffers with one-time COVID funding, and now some of those staffers will have to be let go. 

Still, LA Unified has made strong gains since the pandemic, she said, and the district must work hard to preserve its upward trajectory despite financial headwinds. 

“We would love to share good news, especially this time of year,” said Ortiz-Franklin. “But the reality is, it is really tough.” 

School leaders across LAUSD received preliminary budgets for the next year over the last few weeks, said Ortiz-Franklin. Some schools in her district are facing cuts of up to 15%, forcing them to make tough decisions on which staffers to keep and who to let go. 

Several hundred additional layoffs will be announced in February, she said, when the district makes another assessment of staffing needs. 

“We don’t know the total number yet, and we don’t know which positions yet,” said Ortiz-Franklin.

Judge Susan Illston from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said she believes the who sued will be able to prove the government’s actions are unlawful “as shown by the haphazard way in which the [reductions in force] have rolled out” and that they “are intended for the purpose of political retribution.” 

Illston, who temporarily blocked the layoffs on Oct. 15, said she was moved by some of the written statements from laid-off employees. 

“Although we are here talking about statutes and administrative procedure,” she said, “we are also talking about human lives, and these human lives are being dramatically affected by the activities that we’re discussing.”

Her injunction means the staff must return to work once the government shutdown ends. 

Education Secretary Linda McMahon cut 465 positions, including 132 in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, 137 in the Office for Civil Rights and 121 in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. Madi Biedermann, a spokeswoman for the department, had no comment on the judge’s ruling and referred ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ to McMahon’s earlier calling the department “unnecessary.” 

At Tuesday’s hearing, Michael Velchik, a Department of Justice attorney, argued that the government had the right to lay off employees because Congress hasn’t approved a budget for the current fiscal year.

​​”If you don’t have money coming in, you should be looking for ways to cut costs,” he said.  

But attorney Danielle Leonard, representing the employee unions, disagreed.

“What counsel is arguing is that if Congress lets government funding lapse for one day, the president can fire the entire federal government,” she said. “That is absurd.”

The cuts were the Trump administration’s latest move toward eliminating an agency that it argues should never have existed in the first place. McMahon acknowledges that Congress has the final word on whether the department shuts down, but so far, members have taken no action on a proposal that is likely to fail in the Senate. Two weeks into the government shutdown, the cuts, saying that money was still flowing to the states, and some conservatives argue advocates have overreacted to the layoffs. In a commentary, the American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess said the department for a smooth launch of this year’s financial aid form. But even he questioned the latest cuts, calling them “opaque, severe and lacking in any kind of clear justification.” 

In their complaint, the unions said staff faced “political discrimination,” and even President Donald Trump has called the layoffs an effort to eliminate “Democrat programs.” 

But in filed Friday, Jacqueline Clay, chief human capital officer at the department, said officials didn’t “target employees based on their political viewpoints,” but considered other factors including a shortage of funds.

‘Risks of harm’

Last week, over 60 organizations asked the Senate education committee to hold an oversight hearing into the administration’s actions, which they said have caused “unnecessary chaos” and “create immediate risks of harm to every qualifying individual with a disability and their family.” 

On Monday, also called on Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, to reverse the layoffs.

Some worry that gutting the elementary and secondary office could mean a lack of sufficient oversight of Title I, the largest federal education program. The $18 billion fund is intended to support schools serving low-income students, with the level of funding schools receive based on a set of complicated formulas. 

Without federal staff, there’s a greater risk that states might distribute the funds incorrectly, said Victoria Rosenboom, one of the four staff members who handles those Title I calculations each year. McMahon placed all four on administrative leave. 

“Without us to monitor, the states might monitor less themselves,” Rosenboom said. Her team also gathers data from the Census Bureau every year to determine poverty levels. While there’s still someone in the budget office who can allocate the funds, she said, “they don’t do any of the data collection work. The data quality is all done by us.” 

Others warn of a return to the days when states improperly used Title I funds for construction projects or replaced state dollars with federal funds. 

“There were no limits on the imagination of schools in terms of how they would spend their money, and there were some pretty egregious expenditures,” said Dianne Piche, a former civil rights attorney at the department who is now retired.  

In the early days after the law passed, a from advocates pointed to districts “wasting millions of dollars” on purchases such as a Baptist church building in Detroit, 18 portable swimming pools in Memphis and equipment, including a deep fryer, adding machines and a piano, in one Mississippi county. 

Vought wrote the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a vision for the Trump administration that argued for turning Title I into a block grant. While McMahon’s budget proposal didn’t go that far, she’s currently considering a waiver request from Iowa to roll Title I and other federal funds into a block grant. Indiana submitted a similar proposal, but it excludes Title I. 

Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos proposed during the first Trump administration, but the plan then was to “keep the department functioning,” said Rosenboom, who joined the department in 2019. “At that time, there was still some unease about our future, but definitely not to the same degree as with this administration.”

Parking permits. Desk space. Access cards.

, the U.S. Department of Education instead has spent weeks ostensibly working on the logistics. Meanwhile, the Trump administration wants the U.S. Supreme Court to decide they don’t have to restore those jobs after all.

The legal argument over the job status of Education Department workers is testing the extent to which President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon can reshape the federal bureaucracy without congressional approval.

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The employees, meanwhile, remain in limbo, getting paid for jobs they aren’t allowed to perform.

An analysis done by the union representing Education Department employees estimates the government is spending about $7 million a month for workers not to work. That figure does not include supervisors who are not part of the American Federation of Government Employee Local 252.

“It is terribly inefficient,” said Brittany Coleman, chief steward for AFGE Local 252 and an attorney in the Office for Civil Rights. “The American people are not getting what they need because we can’t do our jobs.”

in March, a week after she was confirmed by the Senate, and described them as a first step toward dismantling the Education Department. A few days later, directing McMahon to do everything in her legal authority to shut down the department.

The Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts, along with the American Federation of Teachers, other education groups, sued McMahon over the cuts. They argued the layoffs were so extensive that the Education Department would not be able to perform its duties under the law.

The , , and the particularly hard. These agencies are responsible for federally mandated work within the Education Department. By law, only Congress can get rid of the Education Department.

U.S. District Court Judge Myong Joun agreed, issuing a sweeping preliminary injunction in May that ordered the Education Department to bring laid off employees back to work and blocked any further effort to dismantle or substantively restructure the department.

The Trump administration sought a stay of that order, and the case is on the emergency docket of the Supreme Court, where a decision could come any day.

In the , Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the harms the various plaintiffs had described were largely hypothetical, that they had not shown the department wasn’t fulfilling its duties, and that they didn’t have standing to sue because layoffs primarily affect department employees, not states, school districts, and education organizations.

Sauer further argued that the injunction violates the separation of powers, putting the judicial branch in charge of employment decisions that are the purview of the executive branch.

“The injunction rests on the untenable assumption that every terminated employee is necessary to perform the Department of Education’s statutory functions,” Sauer wrote in a court filing. “That injunction effectively appoints the district court to a Cabinet role and bars the Executive Branch from terminating anyone.”

The Supreme Court, with a conservative 6-3 majority, has been friendlier to the administration’s arguments than lower court judges. Already the court has allowed to through the courts. And it has .

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last week, Joun issued a telling the Education Department that it must reinstate employees in the Office for Civil Rights. The Victims Rights Law Center and other groups had described thousands of cases left in limbo, with children suffering severe bullying or unable to safely return to school.

Meanwhile, the Education Department continues to file weekly updates with Joun about the complexities of reinstating the laid-off employees. , Chief of Staff Rachel Oglesby said an “ad hoc committee of senior leadership” is meeting weekly to figure out where employees might park and where they should report to work.

Since the layoffs, the department has closed regional offices, consolidated offices in three Washington, D.C. buildings into one, reduced its contracts for parking space, and discontinued an interoffice shuttle.

In the , Oglesby said the department is working on a “reintegration plan.”

Coleman said she finds these updates “laughable.”

“If you are really willing to do what the court is telling you to do, then your working group would have figured out a way to get us our laptops,” she said.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Judge Myong J. Joun of the District Court in Boston in the preliminary injunction that the Trump administration had sought to “effectively dismantle” the Education Department without congressional approval and prevented the federal government from carrying out programs mandated by law. 

Trump administration officials have claimed the March layoffs of more than 1,300 federal education workers were designed to increase government efficiency and were separate from efforts to eliminate the agency outright, claims that Joun deemed “plainly not true.” 

“Defendants fail to cite to a single case that holds that the Secretary’s authority is so broad that she can unilaterally dismantle a department by firing nearly the entire staff, or that her discretion permits her to make a ‘shell’ department,” Joun, a Biden appointee, wrote. 

Combined with early retirements and buyouts offered by the administration, the layoffs left the Education Department with about half as many employees as it had when Trump took office in January. That same month, Trump signed an executive order calling on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.”

The Trump administration has acknowledged it cannot eliminate the 45-year-old department — long a goal of conservatives — without congressional approval despite layoffs that have left numerous offices unstaffed. Yet there is “no evidence” the Trump administration is working with Congress to achieve its goal or that the layoffs have made the agency more efficient, Joun wrote. “Rather, the record is replete with evidence of the opposite.” 

“A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all,” he said. “This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the Department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the Department becomes a shell of itself.”

The White House didn’t respond to requests for comment. The Education Department said it plans to appeal. 

In a statement, Education Department spokesperson Madi Biedermann blasted the court order and called Joun “a far-left Judge” who overstepped his authority and the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit to halt the layoffs — including two Massachusetts school districts and the American Federation of Teachers — â€biased.” Also suing to stop the layoffs is 21 Democratic state attorneys general. 

“President Trump and the Senate-confirmed Secretary of Education clearly have the authority to make decisions about agency reorganization efforts, not an unelected Judge with a political axe to grind,” Biedermann said. “This ruling is not in the best interest of American students or families. We will immediately challenge this on an emergency basis.”

Cutting the federal education workforce in half — from 4,133 to 2,183 — undermines its ability to distribute special education funding to schools, protect students’ civil rights and provide financial aid for college students, plaintiffs allege. They include the elimination of all Office of General Counsel attorneys, who specialize in K-12 grants related to special education, and most lawyers focused on student privacy issues. Plaintiffs also allege the cuts hampered the agency’s ability to manage a federal student loan program that provides financial assistance to nearly 13 million students across about 6,100 colleges and universities. 

The Office for Civil Rights was among those hardest hit by layoffs, with seven of its 12 regional offices shut down entirely. The move has left thousands of pending civil rights cases — including those that allege racial discrimination and sexual misconduct — in limbo. 

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the temporary injunction the “first step to reverse this war on knowledge.” Yet the damage is already being felt in schools, said Jessica Tang, president of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts. 

“The White House is not above the law, and we will never stop fighting on behalf of our students and our public schools and the protections, services and resources they need to thrive,” Tang said in a media release.

In interviews with ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ Thursday, laid-off Education Department staffers reacted with cautious optimism. It remained unclear if, or when, they might return to their old jobs — or if they even want to go back. 

Keith McNamara, a laid-off Education Department data governance specialist, said he’s “tempering my enthusiasm a bit” to see if Joun’s order is overturned on appeal. But he said he was “ a lot more hopeful than I was yesterday” about the potential for the department to return to the way it operated prior to the cuts. 

For federal workers, he said the challenges have been ongoing and monumental, saying the last few months without work have “been very chaotic.” 

“It’s been very difficult to look for other work because tens of thousands of us are all pouring into the job market at the same time,” he told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. “It’s been very stressful.” 

Rachel Gittleman, who worked as a policy analyst in the financial aid office before getting terminated, called the court order on Thursday “a really broad rebuke on the administration’s attempt to shut down this critically important department.” 

“But in many ways, the damage has already been done” as fired employees begin to find new jobs, Gittleman said, and Education Department leadership works to push people out.  

McNamara said it was unclear Thursday whether the department would order fired employees back to work. Nearly his entire team was eliminated, he said, so it was uncertain what work he might do if he returned to the job. Asked if he was interested in doing so, he responded “I’d have to really think about that.”

“Quite frankly, I don’t think this administration is taking the job that the Education Department is supposed to be doing very seriously,” he said. “I’m not sure I’d want to work for an agency that — from the very top — is hostile to the work that the department does.”

Rural school districts — already beset with financial struggles — are furiously scrambling to save a century-old funding source that Republican lawmakers last month eliminated from the federal budget. 

The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which has been approved almost continuously since 1908, is intended to compensate rural counties that have large swaths of non-taxable national forest land. Last year, the bill brought nearly $40 million to 39 California counties, funding everything from after-school programs to school roof repairs. 

The  that, because of lower enrollment, receive less money from the state than their urban and suburban counterparts yet tend to have large numbers of high-needs students and higher costs, such as providing bus service to remote areas.

In December, amid the flurry of last-minute budget negotiations, the bill died in the House after House Speaker Mike Johnson did not put it forward for a vote. The bill’s original sponsors hope to reintroduce it in the next few weeks in a last-ditch effort to get it passed before the final budget deadline in March.

It’s a longshot, but school officials are renewing their fight because the loss of those funds could have deep repercussions for rural school districts.

“It might not seem like much, but it’s real money for us,” said Allan Carver, superintendent of schools for Siskiyou County, which last year received $4.3 million from Secure Rural Schools. “If it was to go away, there would be a hole in our budget that would have an undeniable impact on children.”

GOP promises to cut federal spending

Republican Congressional leaders did not respond to interview requests from CalMatters. But , they have vowed to reduce government spending, including . President-elect Donald Trump has also proposed eliminating the U.S. Department of Education and making other cuts to schools. His advisor, Elon Musk — whom Trump recently named head of a yet-to-be-created Department of Government Efficiency — has been outspoken in his desire to cut federal programs.

That’s been frustrating for rural residents, many of whom supported Trump in November and feel Secure Rural Schools is neither a partisan issue nor a government handout. 

“This is not a ‘gift’ of Congress,” said Lonnie Hunt, a retired judge from rural Texas who’s head of the National Forest Counties and Schools Coalition. “It’s a pact made more than 100 years ago between the government and local communities. If the federal government had not made this deal, they’d never have been able to create the National Forest Service.”  

“Yet somehow it’s been lost in the politics,” Hunt added. “It’s a shame that rural America is being victimized here. And I’m pointing fingers in all directions, not just one side.”

Mold and layoffs in Trinity County

Secure Rural Schools dates from the creation of the National Forest Service in the early 20th century, when the federal government set aside millions of acres of land for logging. Because that land was removed from the local tax rolls, nearby communities were left with budget shortfalls — and few options to make up the cash. To compensate, the federal government agreed to share a portion of timber profits with those areas. When the logging industry started to decline in the 1990s, the government started augmenting the payments through the modern version of Secure Rural Schools.

Congress gave these counties $35.8 million for rural schools last year — but no more is coming

In 2024, these 39 California counties received money through the Secure Rural Schools program because they have National Forest Service land.

The money goes to counties that have National Forest Service land, where it’s divided between schools and public works. California, with nearly 21 million acres of national forest, receives far more than any other state. And within California, Trinity County receives the second-highest amount – $3.5 million last year. 

Located in the mountains of northwest California, Trinity County spans 3,208 square miles and is more than twice the size of Rhode Island. About 80% of it is owned by the federal government, which means it has limited ability to raise money through local tax measures. Due in part to the decline in logging, it’s also one of the poorest counties in the state, with a , compared to 12% statewide.

Trinity Alps Unified, the largest district in the county, received about $600,000 from Secure Rural Schools last year, about 5% of its overall budget. That money was crucial for paying for things like teachers’ aides, art and music programs, field trips and after-school programs, Superintendent Jaime Green said. 

Local residents know all too well what could happen without Secure Rural Schools. In 2016, the only other time in recent memory the bill didn’t pass, Trinity County school districts didn’t have money to make basic repairs to school buildings, leading to dangerous outbreaks of toxic mold at numerous campuses. Students’ and teachers’ lives were disrupted by school closures, and the state had to spend more than $50 million to help districts rebuild. 

This time, Green is warning that the district may have to eliminate seven jobs, leading to bigger class sizes and fewer enrichment programs. He worries that the students who need the most help will suffer the worst impacts.

“We’re an impoverished county, and the only way to reverse that pattern of poverty is through education,” Green said. “Cutting funding hurts kids. We have to be realistic about that.”

Keeping the pressure on

Green and other rural superintendents have traveled to Washington, D.C. almost a dozen times in the past year or so to lobby for Secure Rural Schools. Their work paid off, at least in the Senate, where the bill passed unanimously.

Green and his colleagues plan to keep the pressure on through emails and phone calls to Republican leadership, in hopes of convincing them to support rural schools even as they face pressure from Musk and Trump to slash federal spending.

Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore, president of the National Association of Counties, has also been persistently lobbying for Secure Rural Schools. He said there’s usually some last-minute wrangling before the bill passes, but this year “was vastly different.”

“Every time it comes up, all the cowboy hats show up” to advocate for the bill in Washington, D.C., he said. “This year we had a lot of momentum and we thought we’d get it over the hump. It was a gut punch when it didn’t go through. We were shocked, to be honest.”

Rural areas’ lack of population and money often means that politicians overlook residents’ needs in those areas, Gore said. Likewise, few people outside of rural areas would hear about the impact if programs are cut, he said. None of the House Republican leaders, including Johnson, party leader Rep. Steve Scalise and House Majority Whip Rep. Tom Emmer, represents areas that receive Secure Rural Schools funding. None of the three responded to requests for comment.

“It’s a catastrophe that no one knows about,” said Gore, referring to the bill’s failure. “But we have an absolute responsibility to these small towns, who are the stewards of these largely unmanned federal lands.”

The last Secure Rural Schools payment was in April. Even if Congress returns to funding the bill next year, even one missed year of payments may leave an impact, superintendents said. Children will have fallen behind academically and teachers will have lost their jobs. In small communities where jobs are scarce, layoffs can have a disproportionate impact, sometimes leading to families moving out of the area entirely.

“In the past, we’d go through the motions but we always got it solved by the buzzer,” Hunt said. “This year we’re past the buzzer and we’re in OT. But we won’t quit.”

This was originally published on .

So what can leaders do now to batten down the hatches while this perfect storm is still on the horizon? Here are four concrete actions: 

Review layoff provisions 

Labor is by far the biggest line item in school district budgets. The one-time infusion of ESSER money allowed districts to artificially inflate their staffing levels, so schools may need to lay off a lot of workers in the coming years.

How many? Imagine if staffing counts fell back to the same levels they were in the last year before the pandemic, in 2018-19. If that scenario plays out, districts will need to lay off 384,000 full-time staff, or an equivalent number of part-time staff. Since schools tend to lay off part-timers first, this figure may be undercounting the total jobs at risk. 

To put these numbers in perspective, layoffs of this magnitude would be worse than the Great Recession that hit schools in 2009-10. At that time, public schools the equivalent of 110,000 full-time teaching jobs and 364,000 full- and part-time positions . 

There are a lot of uncertainties in these projections. Still, layoffs anywhere near this size would be for many schools and districts, especially in the low-income communities that received the largest infusions of ESSER money. Besides the affected workers, layoffs student achievement and tend to staff diversity efforts.

Now is the time to avoid, or at least minimize, these problems. According to a 2023 from the National Council on Teacher Quality, about one-third of districts largely or solely rely on last-in-first-out layoff policies and another third use them in combination with other factors. Those approaches are blind to a teacher’s classroom abilities and ignore factors like whether the educator works in hard-to-staff schools or subjects.

Instead, district leaders should review their policies now to shield the lowest-performing schools and hardest-to-staff roles from the biggest cuts. Could they set a policy protecting, say, the lowest-performing 25% of schools and any teaching position that had less than three applicants? These may not be the right cut-offs for every district, but simple numerical rules like this would help minimize the worst impacts of layoffs. 

Close underenrolled schools and help students and staff transition  

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Linda Jacobson worked with researchers from the Brookings Institution and found 4,428 schools across the country that had suffered student enrollment declines of 20% or more. Thanks to declining birth rates, more schools are projected to be on this list in the coming years. 

Like layoffs, closures of underenrolled schools can be harmful to students and staff. But districts that delay painful decisions eventually have to make bigger, even more disruptive changes. Students would be better off if districts were honest about their budget problems and took steps, like matching displaced young people with dedicated counselors or giving them priority access to the best schools, in order to make those transitions easier. If districts wait to close underenrolled schools until they’re under true financial duress, it will be harder to put any of those types of transitional supports in place. 

Compete for all the kids in your area 

It turned some heads last fall when came out that New York City was proposing to spend $21 million on an ad campaign to boost enrollment. It’s not crazy for a district to advertise its offerings, but it needs to be realistic about costs and benefits. For example, one crude way to look at it is to calculate the break-even costs. With New York City $30,000 per pupil, it would take about 700 newly enrolled students to cover its advertising budget. 

This isn’t just about competing with public charter schools, private schools or homeschooling. In many states with , districts have a financial interest in persuading as many local families as possible to enroll their children in their schools.

Evaluate everything

It’s probably too late for districts to use their ESSER funds to put all the necessary processes and data collections in place for formal, rigorous program evaluations, but it would still be smart to use any remaining money to invest in data analyses. If the district expanded or created a summer or tutoring program, did the participating students make gains? How did students, parents or staff experience the program? Even simple data comparisons would be helpful for pointing out what went well and what didn’t and making the case for continued investment. 

As NWEA’s Lindsay Dworkin noted recently, “It has always been important to understand which programs or interventions are working, for which students and at what cost.” Those types of questions are now more important than ever. 

When Congress created the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief program, everyone knew the one-time money would eventually run out. Districts only have a few months left to start preparing for the financial storm that’s coming.