The Central Unified School District is at a moment of reckoning. The latest budget choices reveal a painful truth about where the district places its value. It is not with the students, but with over-policing.
While leadership points to a fiscal crisis to explain why classroom support is being gutted, the actual spending plan tells a different story. By protecting campus police from cuts while throwing the lives of teachers and instructional aides into disarray, the district is fast-tracking a school-to-prison pipeline for the very children it claims to serve with equity.
A Pattern of Inequity
This crisis did not appear out of thin air. It is the newest chapter in nearly 30 years of unequal investment, a pattern that has persisted since Central East High School was first built.
Now, the district is asking its lowest-paid and most essential workers to carry the weight of a financial mess they did not create. The new agreement with CSEA Chapter 474 balances the books by targeting the most vulnerable employees.
Starting June 30, 45 Special Education Aide I positions will have their daily hours cut from 7 to 3.75. That is a 46% pay cut for the people doing the heaviest lifting in our classrooms.
These aides are being told to piece together a living by applying for multiple part-time roles in the district. If two people have the same seniority, their careers will be decided by drawing a name out of a hat.
Meanwhile, 42 high-level Special Education Aide II and III positions were deleted entirely. Central Unified is also cutting three English teachers, one art teacher and one music teacher. This is more than a budget adjustment. This is the dismantling of the academic and social heart of our schools.
The Human Cost of Losing Staff
When experienced aides leave, it is a loss of deep, personal trust. These adults know the students and understand their unique needs. When these roles are cut or made part-time, they are often replaced by newer staff who are still learning and are less likely to stay long term.
Losing English teachers means larger classes and less individual attention. Cutting art and music removes the very classes that help students manage anxiety and stay connected to school. This creates a cycle of instability: fewer consistent adults, crowded classrooms and less support.
For special education students, consistency is everything. They need familiar faces to feel safe.
Cutting these positions isn’t just a staffing change; it is a setback for a child’s academic and emotional progress.
Choosing Police Over Classrooms
The math of this budget is damning. While teachers and aides lose their livelihoods, campus police remain untouched. In 2022, the district added officers to middle schools at a cost of roughly $333,000 every year. Even a small force of five officers costs the district about $375,000 in salaries alone, not counting equipment or administrative costs.
Compare that to an instructional aide earning less than $30,000 a year. Every officer kept represents multiple aides eliminated. Every badge protected is a teacher lost. The district is forcing students and staff to pay the price for this crisis while keeping the funding for campus police perfectly intact, even though those dollars do nothing to improve graduation rates or learning.
Criminalization Is Not Safety
The data show that police on campus do not actually reduce school violence. In many cases, they end up handling minor behavioral issues that school staff are better equipped to manage. There is no evidence that more guns and surveillance make students safer. Instead, a police presence is linked to higher arrest rates for minor behaviors, creating a negative environment for learning.
For students of color, this is especially dangerous. The school-to-prison pipeline is the process where students, mostly Black and Latino, are pushed out of schools and into the criminal justice system. It happens when we replace counselors and aides with law enforcement. When a student struggles in a classroom that has no aide to help but does have an armed officer, a behavioral mistake becomes a criminal record.
Central Unified serves a student body that is 90% students of color. These are the exact students research shows are most harmed by police and most in need of classroom support.
Black students are twice as likely to be arrested on campus as their white peers, even though they do not engage in more criminal behavior. An arrest can follow a student forever, disqualifying them from financial aid or housing and making them 25% more likely to drop out and tripling the chances that they will end up in prison as adults.
By removing the aides who provide early intervention and keeping the officers who respond with handcuffs, the district is choosing to fund a pipeline to prison.
The Bottom Line
The worst part of this crisis is that Central Unified has ignored a proven alternative: restorative justice. Instead of punishment, restorative practices focus on fixing harm and keeping students engaged. Schools that use this model see huge drops in arrests and suspensions. Nearby, the Fresno Unified School District invested more than $3.6 million into this framework to keep students out of the pipeline. Central Unified has made no such move.
A budget is a statement of values. This budget says police are worth more than the people who actually educate and protect our children. There is no academic or safety reason to prioritize officers over instructional aides. The choice is deliberate.
Before Central Unified cuts one more teacher or aide, it should answer why the police budget is untouchable while instructional aides and teachers are being cut. Cut the police first. Restore the classrooms. Until then, this is not just a budget failure. It is a moral one.
Our children deserve a district that fights for them, not one that fights for the school-to-prison pipeline at their expense.
