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Trustees consider trimming instructional coaching and reducing guaranteed field-experience expansion to close budget gap
Summary
Staff proposed reducing instructional coaching FTE from 25 to 15 and trimming guaranteed field-experience expansion to save money; trustees expressed concern about instructional support and the educational value of field experiences and asked for options.
As the board considered ways to close the FY26 funding gap, staff presented options that would reduce the number of school‑based instructional coaches and defer expansion of guaranteed field experiences for high school students.
Maya Kumazawa and Craig Domer, executive director of curriculum assessment and instruction, explained the instructional coaching model: 25 FTE currently provide job‑embedded professional learning, typically split across two schools. Reducing coaches to 15 FTE (a 10‑FTE reduction) would save roughly $1,000,000 but would leave some schools without coach support, limit the number of teachers coached, and restrict support to identified priority areas.
Staff also recommended preserving existing K–8 guaranteed field experiences but deferring the planned high‑school expansion. Katina Dudley, science coordinator, said the reduction would not affect current field experiences in K–8 but would limit the division’s ability to extend school‑based guaranteed field experiences to high-school courses in FY26.
Trustees asked about the tradeoffs: fewer coaches would reduce in‑classroom professional development and could slow improvement cycles; deferring furniture and technology replacement and exploring Head Start funding for preschool were other operational options staff suggested to reduce non‑pay operating costs. The board asked staff to model specific school‑level impacts of coach reductions and to return with alternatives that could preserve coaching for new teachers or highest‑need schools.
No final decision was made; staff included these options in the draft balancing scenario and will deliver school‑level impact spreadsheets for trustee review before final budget adoption.
