_{Pine Grove School | Photo by Amanda Dockter}

Del Norte Unified School District has been able to forego issuing final layoff notices to most of its certificated and classified staff members, Superintendent Jeff Harris said.

But since many of those positions will continue to be paid for through one-time grant dollars, DNUSD may find itself in the same boat again next year, Harris told Redwood Voice Community News on Monday.

“We’ve lost about 450 students since 2019,” he said, echoing a statement from a press release the district issued Feb. 28. “Losing 450 students would be the equivalent, at this point, of closing ‘O Me-nok, Mountain, Sunset and Bess Maxwell schools. What that means is that prior to 2020, we had a certain number of teachers. And, today, we have approximately, I think it’s 21 teachers more than we had before the pandemic even though we’ve lost 450 students.”

Most of the 14 teachers that received preliminary pink slips in March left the district through “general attrition,” the superintendent said. The Board of Trustees decided not to follow through on issuing final notices to the two out of those 14 that were left, Harris said.

“Every year we’ll have someone last minute who says ‘Oh, my family’s going to have to move,’ or ‘Oh, this came up,’” he said. “So we decided to go ahead and keep those two teachers that were last on that [layoff] list.”

On Thursday, Harris told the Board of Trustees that the DNUSD had identified “different funding streams” to continue to pay for the eight library technicians that had received notices in March.

One of those sources includes California Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant dollars, a portion of which the state had rescinded during the pandemic and is now returning to school districts, Harris said.

DNUSD was also able to move eight out of 33 paraprofessionals, also known as instructional assistants, into its transitional kindergarten classes to satisfy a new state-required ratio of 10 students to one adult. Two adults would supervise a class with 20 transitional kindergartners, Harris said.

Two other paraprofessionals are working with “different populations of students,” he said.

DNUSD will have to issue layoff notices to 22 paraprofessionals, but most are applying for other positions within the district, Harris told Redwood Voice.

“We had a number of other openings they could apply for: After school expanded learning opportunity positions, behavioral intervention for severely handicapped students — [positions] we had contracted out because we had trouble filling them,” he said, referring to the district having to hire third-party contractors to meet the needs of its special needs students. “A number of paraprofessionals did apply for other positions within the district, but even though they may have taken another position within the district, we still have to give them that May 15 notice.”

Harris told trustees on Thursday that he doesn’t think DNUSD will be losing 23 former paraprofessionals.

Del Norte Unified had followed California law by notifying employees by March 15 that they may not have a job for the 2025-26 school year, Human Resources Director Alyssa Obermeyer told trustees at a special meeting March 4.

Final layoff notices for certificated staff are issued by May 15.

On Feb. 28, DNUSD stated that it needed to realign its budget and adjust staffing levels due to having 450 fewer students than in 2019. This resulted in a $6.2 million decrease in funding, according to its press release.

COVID-era relief dollars, such as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSR) funds enabled DNUSD to hire instructional support staff and library technicians to mitigate learning loss as a result of the pandemic. But those dollars were never intended to fund permanent positions.

Those pandemic relief dollars have since expired, leaving the district to “look at how we were going to pay for positions,” Harris said. Otherwise, he said, they would all be paid for out of the general fund, which has a $2.5 million deficit.

“We knew we would be able to work through the process. We knew we would be able to mitigate some of the layoff notices, but we needed time,” Harris said. “Time to see where the state was going with financing. Time to look for alternative funding. Time for a lot of things.”

In addition to paying for positions with one-time grant funding, Harris said the district was able to shift Title I money intended for professional development to save some jobs.

Though she didn’t know how many had decided to retire, Amber Tiedeken-Cron, president of the Del Norte Teachers Association, said Monday that she was glad the district found funding sources to avoid layoffs.

Those staff reductions could have led to combination classes in nearly every grade level at multiple school sites, she said, which is also being avoided.

Still, Tiedeken-Cron said people should continue to pay closer attention to the district’s budget process.

“There wasn’t a lot of talk about spending or how different grant funds were being used until the layoffs hit and then that’s when the community always takes notice,” she said. “But we’re keeping a closer eye on it as a union and as a community. To make sure every time they set a budget, they’re prioritizing their staff that work with students over all other things.”