The San Marcos Unified School District board blocked a proposal to cut elementary school librarians’ hours Thursday. District leaders say the coming years will likely bring more layoffs as enrollment declines and costs go up.
San Marcos Unified faces a $10 to $11 million deficit in next year’s budget. At a meeting on Thursday, the board considered a series of cuts to save about $2 million. The district’s 10 elementary school librarians would have had their hours reduced and their benefits taken away.
Whitney McCoy has been a librarian at Carrillo Elementary School for nine years.
“I can't support my family on 3.75 hours a day and no health insurance,” McCoy said. “I would have had to seek employment elsewhere, which was absolutely heartbreaking, the prospect of that.”
Students, parents and school staff packed the board room on Thursday night. They held up posters, wore T-shirts and spoke in support of the librarians.
The board ultimately removed the librarian positions from a list of staff reductions. That means they’ll keep their full-time jobs for at least one more year.
“I am elated and overjoyed and very excited,” McCoy said.
Board members warned that other cuts are likely still ahead. The district expects $10 million deficits again next year and the year after.
“It's an incredibly difficult position, because we do not want to cut our librarians, and we need to keep our district in business,” board member Heidi Herrick said. “There is no winning.”
Superintendent Andy Johnsen said the district has made cuts to other parts of its budget, including in the district office.
“We always do make non-staffing reductions before staffing reductions,” Johnsen said. “When 86% of your budget is in people, those non-staffing reductions only go so far.”
The board did approve layoff notices for about 17 teachers, social workers and counselors on Thursday.
Dale Pluciennik is president of the San Marcos Educators Association. He wants the district to offer a retirement incentive so teachers can choose to leave the district rather than get laid off.
“The last time we offered one was in the 21-22 school year. We had 44 retirees,” Pluciennik told the board. “If we had done this in November 2025, the current RIFs could have been avoided.”
San Marcos is one of the many districts in San Diego County facing tough budget decisions as the number of students continues to drop.
The district’s enrollment has dropped by about 2,300 students since 2019. It’ll likely drop by another 300 next year, said Erin Garcia, who oversees the district’s business services.
“Just in the last two years, we have declined by 883 students,” Garcia told the board earlier this month. “That’s about the size of a healthy elementary school for us.”
Kids aren’t necessarily moving from public schools to private or home schools, either. Garcia said San Marcos Unified teaches 89% of the students living in the district, up from 84% in 2020.
Fewer students means less funding from the state. That’s because state funding is largely based on attendance.
Utilities, insurance and health benefits are all costing districts more money at a time when they’re bringing less in.
The state’s cost of living adjustment this year sent an additional $2.4 million to the district, Garcia told the board. The cost of health benefits for the district rose by $3.5 million.
“That money did not even cover this one cost,” Garcia said.
It’s a challenge for all of California’s schools, Johnsen said at the meeting on Thursday.
“The room that you see full here tonight, what's playing out here is playing out in school districts all up and down this state,” he said. “I hope that the folks who are legislating and making some of these decisions are taking note of this.”
