During the Feb. 13 MUSD board meeting, Superintendent Cheryl Jordan proposed that MUSD should cut spending by approximately $2.1 million for the 2024-25 school year to reduce deficit spending and perform cost management. Recommended programs to be cut included one full-time equivalent (FTE) employee in the MHS Navy Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (NJROTC) program and 3.75 FTE district health clerks. In response, our community rose up, making public comments at multiple board meetings about the importance of NJROTC and health clerks in our district—and our board listened. Ultimately, MUSD will not make staffing cuts from either program right now, Jordan said in an interview.
We, The Union, commend this democratic exchange. Our community made its voice heard, from concerned citizens submitting a remarkable 48 written public comments about the value of health clerks at the March 12 board meeting to multiple NJROTC students speaking at the Feb. 13 board meeting about the importance of having a second NJROTC instructor.
We believe our district is heading in a positive direction, with individuals passionately speaking out about issues that matter to them. Time and time again, we have seen how public comments introduce valuable perspectives and inspire further discussion among the board. We encourage community members to continue watching board meetings and weighing in on important decisions because they have very real consequences in our district.
At the same time, we’d also like to commend our school board for acting on the community’s input by delaying these funding cuts. Our NJROTC program, though it currently only has 52 enrolled students, has always been a loud voice on campus, both literally and figuratively; from partaking in military drills to developing leadership skills, enrolled students often spend all four years of high school in NJROTC, cultivating a sense of community, discipline, and patriotism. Especially considering that MHS’s NJROTC program is the only one in the South Bay, such a program at least warrants further discussion on how a staffing cut may negatively impact students and the future of the program itself.
Similarly, as multiple public commenters expressed, limiting the number of health clerks and making them work part-time between multiple school sites may compromise safety and quality of care for students, which must be evaluated before making a decision. The board acknowledged these potential consequences and made what we believe was the right decision: to gather more information before taking action.
We’d also like to recognize the complexity of the situation: in light of MUSD’s ongoing deficit spending, an unexpectedly low Cost-of-Living Adjustment of 0.76% from the state projected for next year, and suboptimal district-wide attendance rates, we understand that the board must remain fiscally responsible while also keeping the community’s priorities in mind. We applaud the board for being flexible and willing to compromise on reaching our $2.1 million budget cut goal, at least for the time being, to preserve programs important to our community. Through its actions, the board has not only established the district’s commitment to student safety and various occupational and lifestyle avenues, but it has also established that it prioritizes students’ and families’ opinions and is truly representative of the people it serves.
Meanwhile, we hope the board remains open-minded by exploring other avenues of funding, like grants, for these programs. These past few board meetings have illustrated how important it is for the board to hear about the grassroots impact of their decisions from those affected firsthand, and we hope the board will continue to invite input—and the community will continue to provide it—as we determine how to meet future goals in spending cuts.
