Recently, Berkeley Unified School District has been trying to figure out how to balance an eight million dollar budget shortage for next year. On Saturday, March 15, 2025, hundreds of notices were sent out to BUSD teachers, staff, and administrators, notifying them that their position may be eliminated for the 2025-26 school year. While these notices may not lead to actual layoffs, they have created lots of stress and confusion for people who help make schools run every day. Now, students, families, and educators are wondering how these budget cuts will affect their schools, classrooms, and support systems in the coming year. An official announcement will be sent out on Thursday, May 15, 2025, to inform BUSD employees whose positions will be eliminated for the coming school year.
When talking about layoffs and eliminations of positions, it is important to note that in school districts, there are two main categories of workers: classified and certificated staff. Classified employees include support roles such as custodians, instructional aides, clerical workers, and transportation staff — employees who do not require a credential but are employed in positions that are crucial to the daily functioning of schools. Certificated staff, on the other hand, are employees who hold teaching state-issued credentials or licenses, such as classroom teachers, counselors, and administrators.
While both groups play essential roles in education, they are represented by different unions and follow different layoff procedures, which means the ongoing budget crisis affects them in different ways. According to documents shared by the district, during this round of job elimination notices, over a hundred more classified jobs were sent the notice than certificated jobs.
In BUSD, there are currently five restorative justice counselors, one for each middle school — certificated staff — and two for Berkeley High School — classified staff. In March, 2025 both BHS restorative justice counselors got a notice from BUSD that their position may be eliminated in the following year.
“A big part of the job as a restorative justice counselor is understanding what’s going on with our students and then helping them to share their voice in their own learning,” Aaron Lechuga, a restorative justice counselor at Longfellow Middle School, said. Unlike some of the other restorative justice counselors, Lechuga did not receive a notice on March 15, 2025. “A lot of our work is centered around working with our most marginalized students, and if we lose some of the restorative justice counselors, they will be even more marginalized. We are the people who are there to connect with them and to represent them, and if we aren’t there, they’ll have less access,” he said.
Another program that could be affected by the budget cuts is the Cooking and Gardening program. Cooking and Gardening educators work with students in BUSD to bring classroom learning to life in the garden, mainly in K-8 grade.
“Most of my staff work less than full time, and that has been the model for a long time,” Benjamin Goff, the BUSD Program Supervisor for the Cooking and Gardening program said, “Last year, I had to make a few adjustments within the program and make reductions, but we were still able to maintain programming in terms of the amount of instruction every kid gets. In the past, it affected us very minimally, and it’s looking hopeful that the program will be able to maintain it for next year.”
The Cooking and Gardening program will likely operate normally, but a new issue has been brought forth. Due to California requirements, BHS must implement a mandatory PE class requirement for students starting in the 2026-27 school year. This means that BHS will have to hire more PE teachers, and with the new budget constraints, they will need to make even more adjustments.
“To me, this work is really sacred,” Lechuga said, “Behind every notice is a person, a classroom, even a student who’s impacted.”