The school board whittled down the number of vacant classified positions by 36 on Thursday, agreeing with Del Norte Unified School District’s director of fiscal services that they weren’t needed any longer.

Prior to the Board’s meeting, the district had 114 vacancies in its general fund, child development and nutrition departments, Greg Bowen told trustees. Some of those positions rely on moneys that are already spent, he said, and have cluttered the district’s budget.

Eliminating these positions would account for about 32 percent of the number of overall vacancies within DNUSD, Bowen said. No one will be laid off, he said.

“This is a great start. There’s still more work to do over the summer while we review programs and value the positions that are still vacant,” he said. “But this is a great start to get us going for the budget for ’24-25.”

Many of the positions slated for elimination were funded through the Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief program, or ESSR. These funds were allocated to DNUSD during the COVID-19 pandemic, between fall 2020 and fall 2021 to mitigate the effects of school shut down in the spring and other restrictions during the 2020-21 school year.

Those moneys were to be spent by this fall, according to Bowen.
Though the district began seeking candidates for the new positions, many were never filled.

“Retaining these unfilled positions in their current status is not recommended for a number of reasons: 1) they divert efforts away from recruitment of critical positions, 2) they create an inaccurate budget, 3) they have not generated any improvement to student support, and 4) the limited term funding that established most positions is now ended,” Bowen stated in his staff report.

CSEA Great Northern 178, which represents DNUSD classified staff, support the district’s decision to eliminate those vacant positions, President Jenna Lussier said.

“This has needed to happen for a long time,” she said. “I’m so happy it is going to take those [positions] off the books and it’s not going to clutter up our openings any longer.”

SHARE →