The Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Education, in deliberations that began in early February and finalized at its March 11 meeting, authorized the possible reduction of 58.85 Full Time Equivalents, or FTEs. This means employee layoffs.
But the painful discussions that took place in those meetings went beyond the technical machinations of budget language. Among those who were slated to receive pink slips were 2025 MBUSD Teacher of the Year Maddie Hutchinson, beloved Mira Costa High School Athletic Director Mike Rosenthal, and several special education educators known for their ability to connect with students who otherwise might not find their way within public education.
The “fiscal cliff” that Deputy Superintendent Dawnalyn Murakawa-Leopard had long warned was coming had arrived, emphatically. Board Vice President Jen Dohner, noting that the district had depleted its emergency reserves, said these layoffs cut deeper.
“We are not trimming fat,” Dohner said at the February 25 meeting. “We are trimming muscle. There’s no fat left.”
It was the second consecutive year of significant layoffs. Last June, the board authorized 31 position reductions in adopting its 2025-26 budget — itself a painful moment that board president Wysh Weinstein described as “bleak, and getting bleaker.” The reductions approved this year are nearly double that number, broken down as 40.4 certificated FTE, 15.45 classified FTE, and 3 management FTE, taking effect in the 2026-27 school year.
The structural forces driving the crisis are not new, and Murakawa-Leopard has been describing them with increasing urgency for years. California’s Local Control Funding Formula, adopted in 2013 to direct more money to districts serving high-need students, leaves Manhattan Beach chronically underfunded. The formula provides a base grant to every district, then layers on supplemental and concentration grants tied to the percentage of students who are English learners, foster youth or low-income. With just 7.09 percent of its students in that category — the second lowest among all unified school districts in California — MBUSD receives $11,657 per student in total LCFF funding. The state median is $14,421. The highest-funded district in Los Angeles County receives $16,578. The gap, multiplied across nearly 5,700 students, amounts to millions of dollars in foregone revenue over time.
The formula is intentional, Murakawa-Leopard has always been careful to note. Students with greater needs require greater resources, and the state has made a principled decision to direct money accordingly.
“The LCFF is structured this way intentionally, because the idea is that the structure provides equity,” she told the board at a February budget workshop. “The students who are falling into the unduplicated pupil count come to school with greater needs. So this is not to criticize the structure. It is simply to point out that it creates vast funding disparities.”
But the base grant — the floor beneath every district regardless of demographics — has not kept pace with the actual costs of running a school. A recent EdSource commentary by Buckeye Union School District Superintendent David Roth put it plainly: in 2013, fewer than 70 school districts were meaningfully below the statewide weighted median revenue per student. By 2024, that number had grown to more than 215 districts — more than one in five in the state. On average, those districts receive nearly $2,300 less per student than the median.
Manhattan Beach is near the bottom of that group. The revenue MBUSD receives is $2,764 less per student than the state median in total LCFF funding — and nearly $5,000 less than the highest-funded district in Los Angeles County.
The consequences have compounded over time. Between 2014-15 and 2024-25, LCFF revenue grew 44 percent — an increase of $20.2 million. Over the same period, the district’s fixed costs, those it has little or no ability to control, grew 112 percent — an increase of $23.7 million. The gap between those two growth rates, sustained over a decade, has produced a district running a structural deficit ever since the LCFF took effect in 2013-14 — the only exceptions were a single year with a surplus of less than $80,000, and the temporary surpluses during the pandemic years, driven entirely by one-time state and federal relief funding. That relief has since expired, and the structural deficit has returned. Pension obligations alone rose $11.9 million. The district’s mandatory contribution to special education — legally required services it cannot reduce regardless of funding — grew $7.3 million, from $10 million to nearly $20 million annually. Health and welfare costs rose $3 million. Some utility costs have increased nearly 200 percent. Some liability insurance costs, driven in part by legislation extending the statute of limitations for childhood sexual assault claims, have risen even more dramatically. The result is that MBUSD has continually drawn down reserves to cover the difference between what the state sends and what it actually costs to run the schools.
“These are must-dos that we can’t not pay,” Murakawa-Leopard said. “And so when these costs go up, we don’t have a way to decide not to pay them.”
Without the reductions now being implemented, the Second Interim budget report ( a state-required mid-year financial update) projects the annual deficit growing from $3.12 million this year to $6.28 million in 2026-27 and $7.01 million the year after — a trajectory that would exhaust the district’s remaining reserves within two years.
Trustee Jen Fenton said continued deficit spending is no longer an option.
“This tough year has brought us to this pinnacle,” she said at the March 11 meeting. “Are we okay with this, just because we’ve done it for eight years in the past? These are the decisions we’ve got to make. We’ve got to put on our big kid pants.”
The district has long relied on the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation and local parcel taxes to partially bridge the gap. MBEF provides approximately $7.1 million annually. Measure MB, a parcel tax renewed by voters in March 2024 for a second six-year term, provides another $2.5 million. Together, those sources represent roughly 10 percent of the district’s total budget — far above the state average. But as Murakawa-Leopard has noted repeatedly, local generosity has limits.
“These funding sources have really sustained this district in many foundational ways for many years,” she said at the February budget workshop. “But they don’t just grow because we need more money.”
The erosion of Measure MB’s purchasing power is a case in point. When voters first approved the $225-per-parcel tax in 2018, the revenue funded 27 teaching positions. This year it funds 17. The dollars are roughly the same. The cost of a teacher is not.
The reserve levels tell the same story. A decade ago, the district maintained an unrestricted reserve of nearly 19 percent of expenditures — a substantial cushion. By last June, that figure had fallen to roughly 7 percent, still above the 5 percent threshold required by board policy but trending sharply downward. The Second Interim projects it falling to approximately 5 percent by the end of this school year — right at the board policy floor, and not far above the state minimum of 3 percent. After required reserves and restricted funds are set aside, the money actually available for board decisions, what the district calls the undesignated balance, had fallen to $89,106. In a budget of more than $108 million, that is not a rounding error. It is a warning.
The district has also been borrowing more heavily each year to manage cash flow. Because property tax revenue arrives unevenly — in large disbursements in December and April — the district must cover operating expenses in the intervening months. It does so through Tax Revenue Anticipation Notes, or TRANs, short-term borrowings that must be repaid within the fiscal year. In 2017-18, the district borrowed $7.5 million. This year it borrowed $17 million. The Los Angeles County Office of Education has repeatedly flagged its concern about the district’s growing reliance on this mechanism.
Standard and Poor’s took notice of the broader picture in February, downgrading MBUSD’s credit rating from AA to AA-, citing what it called the district’s “projected drawdowns, resulting in a reduction in reserves to levels no longer comparable with those of similarly rated peers.” Fenton noted the cascading implications of that downgrade at the March 11 meeting.
“You tie that to our bond rating,” Fenton said, “and now it becomes an issue of rainy day [emergency funds]. Now it becomes an issue of, what do our class sizes look like? Now it becomes an issue of, what is the risk? Now it becomes an issue of, can we even get bonds?”
Faces and names
The human cost of the reductions filled both the February 25 and March 11 boardrooms with parents, coaches, students and community members who came to speak on behalf of people and programs they feared losing. The outpouring on behalf of Rosenthal was particularly striking: 57 pages of written public comment submitted in a single night, coaches lining up at the podium, student board members speaking from the heart.
But board President Tina Shivpuri was careful to resist framing the response as a measure of relative worth.
“This is not a popularity contest,” Shivpuri said.
She noted that for other positions on the reduction list — librarians, science specialists, special education coordinators — the advocates were no less devoted, only less visible.
“For any of these teachers and roles, if people knew the names,” Shivpuri said, “I’m sure we would have just as many families come in.”
“Every single one of these people give 100 percent to the district and go way above and beyond,” said Trustee Cathey Graves. “They’re beloved by our community and by us. There’s not one of them that we want to include in this number.”
The pink slip issued to Maddie Hutchinson drew some of the most pointed reaction. Hutchinson, a Mira Costa English teacher who also leads Link Crew and Comedy Sports, was named a 2025 California Teacher of the Year finalist — top ten in the state. Kim Bennett, whose daughter has been in Hutchinson’s programs for four years, was direct about the absurdity of the situation at the March 11 meeting.
“A Teacher of the Year has a pink slip,” Bennett said.
Jim Connolly, whose daughter is a junior at Mira Costa and a Link Crew member, described what Hutchinson had built. “She was last year’s finalist for California Teacher of the Year,” he said, “and the effort that she puts in for Costa is amazing — not just Link Crew, but sponsoring other activities as well.”
Bennett added that Hutchinson’s gift was rare — the ability to be both a parent’s teacher and a student’s teacher simultaneously. “She combines them both,” Bennett said. “She does it with a lightness, a sense of fun — she has that. And she gives all her extra energy for Link Crew, for Comedy Sports.”
The proposed reductions in special education drew some of the most affecting testimony of either meeting. Jessica Cornelison, whose son has Down syndrome, told the board that two special education coordinators — Allison Desfor-Schauber and Sam Hucker — were not discretionary positions but load-bearing ones.
“I speak for my son who has Down syndrome, whose speech is often difficult to understand,” Cornelison said. “I speak for students who cannot communicate without assistive technology and the specialists who teach them how to use it. I speak for students with dyslexia who require specific interventions, additional supports and tremendous resilience to learn to read.”
She was direct about what the loss of those coordinators would mean.
“These coordinators do the critical work that makes it possible for students in special education to access education,” Cornelison said. “There is nothing discretionary about their role. The system simply does not function without them. They keep IEPs in compliance. They support students, staff, families. They help solve complex problems quickly and thoughtfully. They bring compassion and care to situations that can otherwise become incredibly difficult. That compassion builds trust, and that trust allows problems to be addressed early, collaboratively and with dignity for everyone involved.”
Connie Porter, president of the classified employees union CSEA, described the impact of the reduction notices on the district’s non-certificated staff — the custodians, instructional aides, clerical workers and others who keep schools running day to day.
“I have spent the last few nights on the phone with several classified employees,” Porter said, “listening to them cry, sharing what’s going to happen if they lose their jobs — because that’s just the type of person that I am. I’m human too.”
She asked the board to revisit the 15.45 classified FTE reductions and to look for alternatives. She also expressed frustration that the Supplemental Employee Retirement Plan being offered to classified employees carried a lower benefit — 50 percent of salary — than the 75 percent being offered to certificated staff. District officials explained that the difference was financial: because classified salaries are more compressed between top and bottom of the schedule, the savings from a classified retirement are smaller, and a higher benefit would result in a net loss to the district. The other issue is that classified employees will be replaced, albeit with lower cost employees, but the net result is savings will be less. A district consultant noted that other districts commonly do not offer classified employees early retirement incentives for these reasons.
“Our classified staff is the heart and soul of our campuses,” Graves said. “And we certainly don’t want this decision, which is totally based on financial interests of the district, to reflect our thoughts and feelings about them.”
Poll: no financial need
The district also explored whether a new, larger parcel tax could help offset the cuts. Polling conducted by FM3 Research between February 7 and 18, surveying 509 likely Manhattan Beach voters, found the community was not ready. A proposed measure at $216 per parcel annually — roughly $18 per month, with a senior exemption — drew 48 percent support. Forty-five percent were opposed. The two-thirds threshold required for passage was not remotely in sight. Even lower parcel taxes, at $144 and $96 per year, did not come close to approval. The $96 tax, which would raise $1 million a year versus $2.4 million for the $216 tax, only earned 52 percent approval.
The polling consultant, Charles Heath, delivered the findings at the February 25 meeting with characteristic directness.
“I think the fundamental problem here is that voters view a measure like this as a solution to the problem, and I don’t think that currently enough of your voters in your community perceive that there’s a significant budget problem,” Heath said.
The polling data made the paradox visible. Seventy-six percent of Manhattan Beach voters hold a favorable view of the school district — higher than at any point in recent years. That approval, Heath and his colleague Sharon Pinkerton explained, is precisely what makes passing a tax so difficult. Voters who think the schools are doing well don’t perceive an urgent need for more money. Only 48 percent of those surveyed said the district had “great” or “some” need for additional funding — down sharply from 58 percent two years ago.
“The success masks the ability to recognize the need for more funding,” Pinkerton said.
The correlation between perceived need and ballot support was striking. Among voters who said the district had a “great need” for more funding, 86 percent said they would vote yes on the measure. Among those who saw “no real need,” 79 percent said they would vote no. The measure lives or dies, in other words, on whether voters understand what is actually happening inside the budget.
Parents of students in the district supported the measure at rates approaching the two-thirds threshold — 62 percent in favor. But parents represent only about 27 percent of likely voters in Manhattan Beach. Among non-parent voters, support fell to 43 percent.
“The vast majority of people who would be voting in this are not parents,” board member Cathey Graves noted. “I think it tells us what the job is ahead of us.”
Heath advised the board to stand down on a June election. The deadline to qualify for the June ballot was March 6 and the numbers, he said, were simply not there. He suggested November 2026 as a potential window, contingent on an aggressive community education campaign between now and then. He was candid about the timeline.
“Sometimes in a situation like this, it requires the reality of people seeing and feeling the cuts in their schools and in their classrooms before it really starts to impact the numbers,” Heath said. “The impacts to class sizes, the impacts to programming, probably aren’t going to be felt until school starts next fall. So maybe November of 2026 is too soon for the community to really have felt and absorbed those cuts, and in that case maybe 2027 is a better opportunity.”
A standalone special election, he noted, would cost approximately $879,000 — nearly half of what the proposed tax would raise annually. That arithmetic effectively rules out a 2027 special election unless the November 2026 option is exhausted first.
Weinstein was visibly frustrated by the polling results.
“I’m just incredibly shocked that even at $8 a month — and anyone who is 65 and over doesn’t have to pay it — that this community is not willing to support that,” she said. “It just blows my mind.”
Shivpuri noted that San Marino Unified, a district of similar demographics, currently levies nearly $1,500 per parcel in local taxes to support its schools — compared to Manhattan Beach’s $225. Manhattan Beach voters had previously rejected a larger parcel tax, Measure A, a citizen-led initiative, in June 2022.
“There are communities that do step up and support teacher funding when the community goes to ask,” Shivpuri said. “We have an uphill battle.”
Small victories
The board’s deliberations over the athletic director position played out across two meetings and involved a somewhat tense exchange between trustees and Superintendent John Bowes, who had originally presented the 0.6 FTE reduction as part of a carefully constructed staffing puzzle.
The public response to the proposed cut had been immediate and overwhelming. Jon Reichardt, who has coached at Mira Costa for more than 28 years, told the board what the absence of a full-time AD had felt like in years past.
“For 20 plus years, I was doing probably three times more work than I should have been doing,” Reichardt said. “At one time I was coaching three varsity sports. Now I understand what a real athletic director does and how much time they put in.”
Rebecca Kelly, a cross country and track coach, said her husband had taken to joking that he must sleep at the school. “He’s always there,” Kelly said. “He makes a huge difference in all the coaches’ jobs, the athletes’ lives, and he’s a pivotal leader on campus. There is absolutely no way to run a year-round operation of sports at Costa in less than half the time. It’s physically and mentally impossible.”
Alfred Brown, a soccer coach who graduated from Manhattan Beach schools and returned to coach out of loyalty to the community, put a number on Rosenthal’s impact. Over the last three years, he said, seven players had chosen to attend Mira Costa specifically because of the soccer program — a program Rosenthal had helped build. “That pays for a salary in and of itself,” Brown said.
Student board members Jaden Kelly and Ava Mohr addressed the trustees directly. Kelly described Rosenthal as someone who “does everything and asks for nothing in return,” present not just at games and practices but at dodgeball tournaments, basketball tournaments and ASB meetings. “I think there’s not many staff members or adults on campus that every single kid can talk to,” Kelly said. “He’s just such a great person to have on campus.”
Mohr, who chose Mira Costa over Redondo Union in part because of the soccer program, said Rosenthal exemplified what made the school what it is. “The basis of that program is the athletics director, Mike Rosenthal,” she said.
When trustees pressed Bowes on the logistics of a 40 percent athletic director — who would open the gym at 7 a.m.? Who would be there at 10 p.m. to close the press box? Who would manage the compliance requirements across 36 sports programs? — Bowes maintained that the administration had confidence the duties could be redistributed. He noted that Mira Costa had operated with part-time and even no athletic director in the past.
“We’ve looked at this carefully….we have confidence that that can be accomplished, because we know it’s been accomplished in the past,” Bowes said.
Trustees were unconvinced.
“This one feels like it hasn’t been truly vetted to me,” said Weinstein. “And maybe not even actually possible.”
Fenton was more direct. “It feels like maybe that plan hasn’t been flushed out,” she said. “I trust our administration at Costa implicitly, but it just — it feels like there isn’t, kind of, a plan.”
Dohner offered a note of procedural clarity for the community watching. “There is no option to just remove somebody off the list and then have one less person that we [pink slip],” she said. “It actually means it gets traded for something or someone else.”
On February 25, the board voted to amend the certificated reduction resolution, removing the 0.6 FTE athletic director reduction and directing cabinet to conduct a more thorough analysis before the March 11 meeting. The total approved reduction that night was adjusted to 40.4 certificated FTE — not the originally proposed 41.
What happened between those two meetings tilted the outcome. The Second Interim budget report, presented at the March 11 meeting, arrived with modestly good news. Revenues had come in $1.05 million above First Interim projections, driven largely by increased lease and rental income. Expenses had dropped $665,000, led by a significant reduction in special education personnel costs resulting from a months-long collaborative effort between the special education, human resources and business departments to reconcile IEP service needs with actual staffing. The projected deficit for 2025-26 had narrowed. More importantly, the multi-year projection with reductions implemented showed the district returning to solvency — a small surplus in 2026-27, growing slightly in 2027-28.
It was enough.
Bowes confirmed the outcome at the March 11 meeting.
“We have reviewed and determined that it’s in the best interest of almost two thirds of our students to have that position stay at 100 percent,” he said.
Don Morrow, the football coach and retired chemistry teacher at Mira Costa who has been part of the school community for four decades, had spoken at the February 25 meeting with visible emotion. He remarked on the eloquence of many of the speakers on behalf of Rosenthal who had preceded him.
“I think we all would be so fortunate, in a moment like this, to have this type of support that Mike’s received here this evening,” he said. “I know I would appreciate my brethren coming out like that. I wanted to speak a little bit more about him, though, from a human side….I don’t know if that story gets told as much, or if we’re so busy day to day with all the competitions and everything else that go on, but this is the most compassionate, caring, courteous, kind, unassuming, modest leader that you could ever imagine.”
Rosenthal himself appeared at the March 11 meeting, not to advocate but to express gratitude. He thanked his coaches by name — more than a dozen of them — and then turned to the board.
“School board, thank you for the lifeline that you gave us,” he said, “and really the recognition and the importance of the athletic department and what we do.”
He thanked MBEF Executive Director Hilary Mahan — “absolutely incredible what you do” — and the parents and community members who had written on his behalf. He closed with a shoutout to the facilities staff who work late nights alongside him at the school.
“My guys,” he said, listing their names. “Guys who have my back and do not hesitate anytime we are working late at Costa.”
The board left the March 11 meeting with a resolve that belied the difficulty of the moment. Shivpuri announced the formation of a Budget Strategy Group, bringing together MBEF, MBX, district PTA leaders and two board members — herself and Weinstein — to pursue both a community information campaign and a longer-term fiscal outlook. The group held its first meeting on March 14.
“The first track is going to be an information campaign,” Shivpuri said, “to get some of these unknowns and questions that a lot of our community has and make sure we can make it a digestible format. The second track is a three-to-five, slash ten-year fiscal outlook — making sure we’re all looking at a future, not just next year, not just tomorrow.”
On the legislative front, the district has joined a statewide coalition called Raise the Base, which advocates for increasing the LCFF base grant — the structural change that would most directly address the funding inequity MBUSD faces. A town hall with Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, who is running for State Superintendent of Schools, sold out quickly, with community members signing up to carry the district’s message to Sacramento. A letter-writing campaign and a potential trip to the Capitol in April are also in the works. Graves, who co-chairs the district’s legislative committee, noted that the Raise the Base coalition has grown from roughly 70 underfunded districts in 2013 to more than 215 today.
“We aren’t alone in that anymore,” Graves said. “And I think we can make a much stronger push to increase the base.”
The layoff notices were due by March 15. Final notices are due by May 15. Between now and then, the district will be watching Sacramento, monitoring enrollment, waiting to see how many employees participate in the voluntary retirement plan, and hoping that some of the names on those pink slips can be called back before the school year begins.
Fenton, who has served on the board long enough to have seen the district navigate multiple crises, offered what amounted to a mission statement for the months ahead.
“We are not going to implode,” she said. “We will still be a phenomenal district. We are still going to educate our kids. We’re still going to have [high] percentages of students who are passing APs and going out to college. But we’ve got to start looking real hard at our spending. That’s my wrap-up.”
Correction: an earlier Easy Reader story on the MBUSD budget workshop inaccurately reported the board was considering 31 layoffs. We apologize for the error. ER
