TL;DR: Don Austin is gone, but math is still pointing towards trouble. We’re paying $35,000 per student - and need to cut staff to cover growing costs.
We had some drama recently at PAUSD. Don Austin said some things that teachers and students didn’t like. Students said some things that Don Austin didn’t like. In the end, Don Austin quit.
However, the root of this is math - not multivariable calculus (though Don Austin didn’t like that either), but budget math.
PAUSD is spending $35,000 per student, or about $340M per year. Dr. Austin wanted to cut about 2.5MM to cover growing costs and decided to remove about 18 positions, which folks did not like, and the board also rejected it. This, combined with lack of transparency and other things caused him to leave.
I was curious where this falls on the overall budget, so I created a PAUSD Budget Explorer. And because of AI, I also added other schools and trends so we can compare.
PAUSD is spending so much money, and is finding it impossible to save. 80% of our budget goes to salaries and benefits so the only way to save is to cut roles (in my opinon, instead of standing shiny new buildings, maybe we should be spending on teachers to teach in those buildings, but that’s a different discussion).
