About 100 Tucson Unified School District jobs aren’t funded for next school year and could be cut unless principals shift money from other programs as federal COVID relief money runs out.
The district’s governing board voted unanimously this week to allocate most of the final $19.1 million in relief money to fully fund more than 200 positions that address academic loss due to the pandemic, including teachers’ assistants.
“Those positions have been critical” and have helped schools improve their letter grades from the state, said Jon Lansa, TUSD’s senior director of grants and federal programs. “These are the positions that are right there with the kids making this happen in our schools.”
Some of the money will also be used in the 2023-2024 school year for summer school; to pay for 30% of kindergarten teacher salaries; and for “multi-tiered systems of support positions” to help students with individual needs if they’re struggling in classrooms.
But that leaves out 98 full-time-equivalent positions previously funded, at least in part, through the COVID money, known as the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief or ESSER fund.
The jobs that will no longer be funded by the relief money include custodians, instructional specialists, school community liaisons, school site technology liaisons and student success specialists. Student success specialists carry out and coordinate mentor programs to help increase student academic and social achievement, the district says.
“It’s very, very important to note that the 98 positions that are not going to be ... continually funded by ESSER the next school year does not mean that they’re going to be cut,” Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo said at the board meeting Tuesday.
Those jobs are specific to certain schools, and each school will have the opportunity to fund them through other available funding sources, such as Title One money for schools with high percentages of low-income families.
However, he did not dismiss this possibility some ESSER-funded positions will be cut eventually, since “these are temporary grant funds.” The deadline to allocate the ESSER money is September 2024.
Trujillo said school administrators originally decided to place those positions under the ESSER funding to make the most of the temporary funds. However, he added, many of those positions were only partially paid for through ESSER and the rest was funded through other grants and sources.
“I don’t think anybody should be looking for other jobs at this point,” board member Ravi Shah said, noting that TUSD has numerous funding sources aside from the COVID relief money.
“Our hope is that we’re able to maintain as many, if not all, of these positions to make sure we’re still doing all the things that we’re doing for our students,” Shah said.
Board member Adelita Grijalva told the Star that, as individual schools shift their money to pay for some of those positions, it could affect some other programs now covered through other grants.
“Could there be a negative impact? Sure. It’s a lot of money, so I’m sure we’re gonna feel it somewhere in the district … but you would have to go through school by school and find out what the impact is going to be,” Grijalva said.
Because of a large number of job vacancies throughout the district, she said she doesn’t think there’s reason for employees affected by the lack of ESSER funding to worry about losing their jobs.
“TUSD wants you to stay with TUSD,” Grijalva said of those employees, adding that she encourages them to speak with their school principals to see how the positions will be managed. Affected workers could switch to other available positions in the district, she said.
“Maybe you’d have to do some other position but the likelihood of you losing the dollar amount that you’re getting every check is very small,” Grijalva said.
Still, board member Sadie Shaw asked administrators to speed up the process of finding funding for the positions left out of ESSER.
“I hope that we could get that presentation brought to the board as soon as possible so that those 98 employees can rest easy about when their contract is going to be renewed for the next school year,” Shaw said.
