UKIAH, CA., 2/27/26 – The Ukiah Unified School District Board of Education on Thursday approved laying off nearly 20 teaching and counseling positions for the 2026-27 school year. The board also voted to eliminate six non-teaching roles.
The district’s service center boardroom on Thursday night was mostly empty, with no attendees besides district employees, as board members gathered at the front of the room to begin the meeting.
A resolution released by the district this week states that the eliminated positions include both vacant and filled roles.
The agenda for Thursday’s UUSD Board of Education meeting said the “administration has completed its review of enrollment trends, program funding, and staffing needs for the 2026-27 school year and has determined that a reduction in certificated staffing is necessary due to declining enrollment, related fiscal impacts, and the elimination of certain instructional programs.”
According to the resolution, the teaching and counseling reductions are approximately equal to 19 full-time and one part-time position. The six eliminated roles are non-classroom jobs, such as school support roles like counselors and resource teachers.
Of the 19 full-time and one part-time positions, seven were vacant, according to the resolution. The eliminated filled positions include teachers from science, math, English language and other departments.
At the school board meeting Thursday, Superintendent Debra Kubin referred to a decline in enrollment as the primary reason for the elimination of positions.
“Those positions that are being eliminated are due to a decline in enrollment,” Kubin said when referring to the elimination of jobs.
According to Dan Dougherty, spokesperson for the Ukiah Unified School District, the district saw an enrollment of 5,895 students in the 2024-2025 school year. That number declined to 5,792 in the 2025-2026 school year, which is a decline of 103 students.
But Dougherty said in an interview that there are additional reasons why the district has eliminated jobs, in addition to declining enrollment.
Some of those reasons, he explained, include the loss of grants and outside funding. He said that some of the counseling positions were eliminated because of the loss of a federal mental health grant.
“This year we lost the school-based mental health grant. That’s an example of how the funding gets so complex in public education,” he said. “Some of our grants are temporary and time-limited. Those positions expire when the grants expire.”
He also said the elimination of vacant positions will allow the district to transfer funds to other departments.
“Cleaning them off the books, we are able to allocate those funds elsewhere,” Dougherty said.
Lisa Rantala, president of the Ukiah Valley Unified Chapter 194 of the California School Employees Association union, said in an interview that the union worked closely with the district on the elimination of positions in order to lessen the impact on people as much as possible.
“It’s not good for anyone to lay people off. That’s detrimental to anybody. Our district really cares about our workforce,” Rantala said.
The Ukiah Unified School District Board of Education generally meets once a month at the district service center boardroom, 511 S. Orchard Ave., Ukiah, or can be watched online at https://www.youtube.com/@uusdlive8940/streams. The next meeting is on March 12 at 6:30 p.m.
Meeting agendas can be found at www.uusd.net/apps/pages/abouttheboard.
They refuse to say out loud that the signing of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, defunded schools, positions that supported children, and mental heath services. I can only guess that the reason they will NOT name the piece of federal legislation that has defunded these programs is because they are MAGA. Tell the truth! Name the legislation. Did you vote for this? Are you MAGA and you won’t admit you voted for this so you deny that the Big Beautiful Bill you voted for has defunded schools across the US? There are 11 schools in the district and you put forward to the parents and public that you are forced to cut millions from the UUSD budget because each school had 9 less students enroll this year. Pathetic liars! I hope you’re not teaching are children your math.
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Why don’t these people just admit they suck at their jobs? Fewer children enrolled ought to mean SMALLER CLASS SIZES. Not fewer teachers and staff. Why don’t they just do everyone a favor and shut up, dry up, and blow away? Only allow those who are interested in rebuilding a functional department remain. Why? BECAUSE TRUMP 😭🤣 No, that’s too easy… it’s because they won’t give up until they’ve ruined their whole machine. Learned helplessness. Willful ignorance. Self satisfied. They’re determined to pursue the long treacherous road of MEDIOCRITY until they reach the ultimate goal- make mendocino county FAMOUS- for being the MOST LAME. Tiniest trophy in the whole world 🏆 but for these loosers, its all they have. Pretty pathetic. But they way they’re headed so far, their odds of winning that trophy are looking pretty good
It would be better for the kids to cut those administrative positions. The schools are top heavy with admins that are paid so much more than a teacher’s salary but really serve little in terms of the learning environment. They just make work for others further down the ladder.
The gender dysmorphia grooming going on in public schools definitely has a lot to do with parents removing their children from today’s public educational system. Choosing to eliminate teachers’ positions in English, math, and science verifies the continuation to dumb down our next generation. Sterilizing these children’s developing minds and bodies guarantees income for the medical and pharmaceutical industries. This has been Bill Gates’ depopulation platform for decades. Regardless of any political party, it has been going on for years. Follow the money. Go into the Freedom of Information Act in this county alone and see what is buried in hundreds and hundreds of pages. If you want your child’s pronoun to be a dog or cat or they/them/cis/bro/whatever so be it. That’s between you and your child. Not for others to conform to. It doesn’t fall into the educational system. It is a personal choice not a public conformity. No argument here to win or lose. A sad Reality. Our children are the ones losing. And the parents of children who are being groomed are losing if they don’t catch it in time. I see it every day. Parents mourning their losses of children falling prey to gender dysmorphia and some parents are being told they have no right to mourn
that loss of her or his son or daughter. No one wins in this except the money trail recipients. This goes deeper than I wanted to express and it is all heartbreaking.
Eliminate school nurses. All theyre allowed to do is basically put on band aids. And let students sit in the “nurses” office. That’d save alot actually . They have too many at each school. No need for more than 2 in my opinion. Start w oak manor school.
I’d rather have a redundant school nurse than a pedo teacher any day.
Budget cuts are never easy, especially in public school districts that are experiencing declining enrollment. Still I wonder, when they approved the cuts last week, did UUSD trustees understand that they were cutting a full-time teaching position at the district’s most popular school by far, Ukiah Independent Study Academy? To my knowledge UISA is the only UUSD school that places dozens of prospective students on a waitlist every single year.
If increasing enrollment is the goal, I haven’t heard a rationale for this cut that makes sense. Have you?