Santa Rosa faculty district on brink of collapse mulls elevate for finance chief

Whereas dozens of staff from this Santa Rosa faculty district gather unemployment, their interim fiscal chief might be set for a fats new paycheck.

Weeks after 80 staff obtained layoff notices from Santa Rosa Metropolis Faculties, district trustees are voting on Luz Cázares’ substantial pay elevate.

If authorized, she’s going to obtain $76,000 in further compensation for her duties. Cázares’ new deal comes regardless of the district’s messy monetary mismanagement. The district introduced in too many new employees for the income it was producing, authorities stated.

On the similar time, pupil enrollment dropped from 16,000 in 2016 to underneath 12,000 in 2025. California districts are usually paid based mostly on the variety of college students enrolled.

Michael High quality, CEO of the Fiscal Disaster and Administration Help Staff, informed the district that it has “some severe money points.”

“Way more severe than some other district within the state. I don’t perceive why you’re all the time out of money,” he added.

Cázares was introduced on in July part-time to assist repair the district’s monetary state of affairs because the individual previously in her place, Lisa August Hulme, grew to become interim superintendent after the district’s prior superintendent Daisy Morales was ousted. She’s a monetary marketing consultant who taught training graduate college students as a professor at UC Berkeley and assisted colleges in fractured monetary conditions.

She additionally labored because the chief monetary officer for the Alameda Unified College District for greater than 4 years, in accordance to her LinkedIn.

Cázares has been credited with steering the college out of its robust monetary state of affairs and has labored way more hours than anticipated. She lower the district’s funds by $2.8 million within the present fiscal 12 months and greater than $30 million within the two upcoming years.

“We knew that this 12 months was going to take plenty of work however I don’t assume we knew precisely how a lot,” district spokesperson Patrick Gannon informed The Press Democrat. “The proposed change of the contract is only a strategy to mirror that.”

The brand new pay elevate will put her whole compensation quantity at practically $230,000. College officers say they budgeted extra for the place than what was used, and vacancies within the funds division additionally helped get monetary savings.

However lecturers are nonetheless upset {that a} prime administration official is getting a big-money elevate. Some are annoyed prime officers are getting paid for each hour of their time whereas they put within the effort off the clock.

“Traditionally, lecturers’ degree of labor has all the time exceeded our time and our pay and the anticipated want,” first-grade instructor Kate Gillespie wrote in an e mail to the board of trustees.

“For many years we have now donated our time and vitality to ‘make it work.’ And only a heads up… we don’t do it tirelessly, because the cliche goes. It’s exhausting. However we do it and have continued to do it for years and years… (District directors) have by no means advised that we must be paid for our unpaid work,” she added.

Different prime officers like Hulme, assistant superintendent Dr. Vicki Zands, and assistant superintendent of instructing and studying Roderick M. Castro all make greater than $200,000 a 12 months in advantages and pay.

Gannon says the extra work required of Cázares shall be mentioned within the assembly.

“This can be a tough time — that is the dialogue we’re going to have tonight to speak in regards to the further work that was required and a possible adjustment to the contract to mirror the work,” Gannon stated. “We needed to try this in a manner that was clear.”

Santa Rosa Instructor Affiliation leaders imagine the pay elevate was pointless.

“Higher than anticipated workload shouldn’t be sufficient to extend the pay for labeled staff,” they stated.

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