UPDATE: 8:45 a.m., Oct. 25, 2019
The superintendent of Vista Unified School District resigned last week as the district expects to cut more than $19 million from next year’s budget.
The announcement came at a school board meeting where dozens of staff rallied to protest the addition of an eighth period class at Vista High and Rancho Buena Vista High Schools. The move is estimated to cost the district $5.9 million.
District employees said now-former superintendent Linda Kimble was forced to resign for criticizing the board’s financial decisions.
“Staff are protesting today (Thursday) is because our school board is being fiscally irresponsible with the funding that the taxpayers and the school district and our budget don’t have,” said Bill Faust, president of Vista’s chapter of the California School Employees Association.
Faust said the move to add the eighth-period classes is just the latest in a trend of overspending in a year when the district expects to make $19 million in cuts.
While Faust said Kimble was wrongfully terminated, President Rosemary Smithfield said Kimble and the board came to a settlement agreement for her resignation, which included a buyout for more than $280,000.
“We’re losing students. We have lots of money to cut,” Smithfield said. “Taking students and academics very seriously, we had wanted to go in one direction, and we found we weren’t on the same page.”
Smithfield also addressed speculation among district employees that the board forced Kimble to resign after she submitted a written complaint to the district about the board president, alleging harassment and a toxic work environment.
Smithfield said the accusations in the complaint were baseless. She admitted the two disagreed intensely about how the district should spend its money, but she said Kimble’s departure is not the result of personal animosity, citing the four-to-one majority vote to approve the resignation.
Kimble declined to comment.
Kimble will be replaced by Matt Doyle, the assistant superintendent of innovation who served as interim superintendent after Kimble was placed on leave in September.
The board also announced Thursday that it will eliminate Doyle’s former position as well as the communication director position at the district, saving over $400,000 for the district.
Smithfield said the board expects to make additional cuts to staffing and programs in the coming months. The school board will seek public input about budget cuts at a special meeting scheduled for Nov. 4.
