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Thousand Oaks

District in Crisis: CVUSD Loses 13 Percent of Students in Four Years, Faces Huge Budget Shortfalls

From fall 2019 to fall 2023, the Conejo Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) lost 2,340 students, a 13 percent decline in enrollment, even though the population of Thousand Oaks declined just three percent in that same period. The administrator-heavy district is now hitting a budgetary brick wall as per-student funding is reduced and COVID funding disappears.

Six CVUSD schools reported declines in enrollments of more than 20 percent. These include Madrona Elementary in Lynn Ranch (with a 27 percent enrollment decline), Westlake Hills Elementary in Westlake Village (also a 27 percent enrollment decline), Maple Elementary in Newbury Park (26 percent enrollment decline), Los Cerritos Middle School in Thousand Oaks (25 percent enrollment decline), Aspen Elementary in Thousand Oaks (24 percent enrollment decline) and Glenwood Elementary in Thousand Oaks (21 percent enrollment decline). District enrollment history for all schools can be seen in the accompanying chart.

In spite of plummeting enrollment and funds, school board trustees voted to give Superintendent Mark McLaughlin an unprecedented six-year guarantee of employment.

Meanwhile, Superintendent Mark McLaughlin’s salary and benefits continue to climb, now topping $400,000 annually, and he recently locked in an unusual six-year contract for himself. McLaughlin has helmed the district since 2017 when 19,000 students were enrolled, and Conejo Valley schools were more desirable to parents across the region. During his tenure, the district has lost more than 3,000 students. According to average daily attendance (ADA) numbers used to determine school funding, district-wide enrollment stands at barely 15,000 students and is falling quickly.

Because a major source of funding is based on enrollment, declining numbers are a wrecking ball to school budgets and teacher retention. Deputy Superintendent of Business Services Victor Hayek has warned the school board for at least two years that one-time COVID stimulus monies would end and the district would be forced to reckon with lower funding due to devastating losses in enrollment.

CVUSD’s biggest cost by far is personnel: fully 87 percent of CVUSD’s budget goes to pay administrators and teachers, many of whom make well north of $100,000 annually. To sustain this workforce, which is serving fewer and fewer students, CVUSD runs annual deficits, which show every sign of worsening. The district began the 2024-25 school year with a $15 million deficit. Hayek expects another deficit of $12 million in 2025-26 and yet another $7 million deficit in 2026-27 — and those are best-case scenarios.

Five CVUSD schools reported declines in enrollment of 24 percent or more.

“Our costs are rising faster,” Hayek told the board in September 2024. Those costs include insurance, utility costs, and transportation. In June, Hayek told the board, “We have to be real about it. It’s going to require some changes.”

In spite of the plummeting enrollment, scores and money, school board trustees voted in August to extend McLaughlin’s employment contract through June 2030, giving him an unprecedented six-year guarantee of employment as head of the school district. The California School Board Association advises the average superintendent contract to be 2 to 4 years. McLaughlin’s original four-year term was extended to five years in May 2020, at the height of COVID lockdowns. McLaughlin negotiated a five-year extension clause, which as of last month, became six years.

McLaughlin’s annual earnings put him comfortably in the range of $400,000 with salary and benefits. His compensation has increased, on average, five percent annually since 2017. His agreement with the district includes what is called a “me too clause,” which EdSource, an independent education nonprofit observer, says “give[s] them the same raises as the employees whose contracts they help negotiate.” This has led to a situation where nobody in the negotiation process between superintendents and teachers has any incentive to keep costs down since both benefit from higher salaries.

“This is a textbook example of a conflict,” David Kline with the California Taxpayers Association, a nonprofit tax advocacy association, told EdSource last year. “You essentially have one person sitting on both sides of the bargaining table. We would like to see the end to that sort of contract. The superintendent should be paid based on performance.”

The average CVUSD teacher’s salary in 2022-23 was $99,333 plus $10,000 to $30,000 in benefits, putting the total pay at $110,000 to $130,000. This data comes from Ed-Data, an education data partnership between the California Department of Education, EdSource and a third group, the Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team.

CVUSD’s plan at this point is to stick taxpayers with the bill. Hayek recently told the board that the public will likely have to pay for the school’s shortfalls going forward.

“The state essentially wants us to go out to the voters and ask for more money,” Hayek said at a recent school board meeting.

Voters approved $197 million in Measure I school bonds in 2014, half of which has been spent so far — but often on things few foresaw. The Conejo Guardian reported recently how CVUSD is spending bond money on gender-mixing restrooms for all K-12 schools so that adults and children, males and females of all ages, use the same restrooms at CVUSD schools.

Many parents have left once-sterling Conejo Valley public schools due to anger over McLaughlin’s insistence on keeping secrets from parents when a child shows evidence of suffering from gender dysphoria. The Conejo Guardian reported in June 2022 how CVUSD instructed teachers and staff to keep information about a student’s sexuality and “gender identity” away from parents. In April 2023, multiple sources within the district came forward to describe how district leaders, including McLaughlin and board member Lauren Gill, were forcing teachers and staff to hide critical information about young students’ life-altering choices from parents, including the so-called “transition” from one gender to another.

At Maple Elementary, the district acknowledged that in January 2022, a third-grade teacher, in coordination with the parent of a young student who had “changed” her gender over winter break, did not inform any other families before using class time to show a video of a pro-gender dysphoria book. The action shocked the Conejo Valley as district leaders told parents in one breath that “transgender” instruction was not taking place in elementary schools while defending a teacher’s spontaneous, principal-approved, decision to promote this disorder in a third-grade classroom.

Fully 87 percent of CVUSD’s budget goes to pay administrators and teachers, many of whom make more than $100,000 annually. To sustain this, CVUSD runs annual deficits.

Officially, only three CVUSD schools reported enrollment increases in the latest figures released by the district. They are Century Academy, Ladera STARS Academy and Weathersfield Elementary, all three within a mile of each other in the northwest area of town. Century Academy is a homeschool-hybrid program for students in grades 6-12 and sits adjacent to the Thousand Oaks High School campus. In 2019, enrollment was at just 181 students. With COVID and the accompanying restrictions on schools, that number swelled to 439 in 2021 but has since dropped to 230.

Ladera STARS (Science, Technology, Arts and Rigorous Scholarship) Academy, a charter elementary school that saw modest growth after initially declining in 2020, grew from 274 to 327 students.

Weathersfield Elementary saw the biggest growth of the three schools growing since 2019, gaining 101 students, an increase of 30 percent.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Teresa: I have been reporting this on Nextdoor.com, doing external audits of this mismanaged CVUSD district for over 10 years. Check out the last two budgets, the massive deficits, loss of students, solution is to spend more money on massive salaries, pensions and health care. Ave Teachers salary is higher, it excludes summer school. Look at the budget at CVUSD for what we pay for teachers’ salaries, then divide by number of teachers. We also pay for substitute teachers when teachers are away and much more. Its more than 110K per year. Look at the Admin salaries, out of control. Massive pensions and health care cost, benefit 45% of salary. District received ADA funding for last year, for this year. So when they lose 700 students, they get last years ADA numbers in funding. Solution, hire more administration. Teachers ratio to students 19-1, going down each year while students leave. Money not going to the children, it goes to salaries, pensions and health care, about 90 cents on the dollar. Look at the cuts projected this year, in 2024-25, all goes to the students in Materials, Supplies, Books, not the salaries, pensions and health care, they go up. Its 100% mismanaged year after year, School Board in bed with Unions, support teachers, not students and parents. Prop R&I for Infrastructure already paid for in Prop 13 funds, double charge on property tax bill, extra in Supplemental Taxes. District is mismanaged, sad part, no one cares to hold anyone accountable. They want parents to bail them out time and time again. Curriculum is horrible, environment horrible, plans never get executed, 50% of students below standards or barely meeting standards in ELA and Math, SAT and other test either flat or dropping, no one cares. Solution, keep the status quo, same paid for Union School Board who supports Unions, same staff, failures are rewarded here.

  2. I’m proud of all the parents who stood up and removed their precious children out of these evil public schools. First and foremost our children deserve better than what this school board has done to our once proud and excellent schools. Shame on these communist so called leaders vote them out and keep your children safe 🙏🇺🇸

    • Perfectly stated Kim! I pulled mine out in 2021 went 100% homeschool and use online AIM Academy in PA…the BEST! Then use Conejo Valley Homeschoolers for social replacement. Wish I had done it starting in first grade.

  3. Lauren Gill needs to be jailed and take Mark with her. No way that was a legit election installing her over Sandy Everett…NO WAY.

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