The Ukiah Unified School District Board of Education has approved laying off nearly 20 teaching and counseling positions for the 2026-27 school year. The board also voted to eliminate six non-teaching roles.

The district’s service center boardroom on Thursday night was mostly empty, with no attendees besides district employees, as board members gathered at the front of the room to begin the meeting.

A resolution released by the district this week states that the eliminated positions include both vacant and filled roles.

The agenda for Thursday’s UUSD Board of Education meeting said the “administration has completed its review of enrollment trends, program funding, and staffing needs for the 2026-27 school year and has determined that a reduction in certificated staffing is necessary due to declining enrollment, related fiscal impacts, and the elimination of certain instructional programs.”

According to the resolution, the teaching and counseling reductions are approximately equal to 19 full-time and one part-time position. The six eliminated roles are non-classroom jobs, such as school support roles like counselors and resource teachers.

Of the 19 full-time and one part-time positions, seven were vacant, according to the resolution. The eliminated filled positions include teachers from science, math, English language and other departments.

At the school board meeting Thursday, Superintendent Debra Kubin referred to a decline in enrollment as the primary reason for the elimination of positions.

“Those positions that are being eliminated are due to a decline in enrollment,” Kubin said when referring to the elimination of jobs.

According to Dan Dougherty, spokesperson for the Ukiah Unified School District, the district saw an enrollment of 5,895 students in the 2024-2025 school year. That number declined to 5,792 in the 2025-2026 school year, which is a decline of 103 students.

But Dougherty said in an interview that there are additional reasons why the district has eliminated jobs, in addition to declining enrollment.

Some of those reasons, he explained, include the loss of grants and outside funding. He said that some of the counseling positions were eliminated because of the loss of a federal mental health grant.

“This year we lost the school-based mental health grant. That’s an example of how the funding gets so complex in public education,” he said. “Some of our grants are temporary and time-limited. Those positions expire when the grants expire.”

He also said the elimination of vacant positions will allow the district to transfer funds to other departments.

“Cleaning them off the books, we are able to allocate those funds elsewhere,” Dougherty said.

Lisa Rantala, president of the Ukiah Valley Unified Chapter 194 of the California School Employees Association union, said in an interview that the union worked closely with the district on the elimination of positions in order to lessen the impact on people as much as possible.

“It’s not good for anyone to lay people off. That’s detrimental to anybody. Our district really cares about our workforce,” Rantala said.

The Ukiah Unified School District Board of Education generally meets once a month at the district service center boardroom, 511 S. Orchard Ave., Ukiah, or can be watched online. The next meeting is on March 12 at 6:30 p.m.

Meeting agendas can be found on the school district website.

This story originally appeared in The Mendocino Voice.