Sacramento City Unified School District trustee Taylor Kayatta is pulling his own proposal to nearly quadruple board members' monthly stipends, from $826.87 to $3,000, after the plan drew swift community backlash while the district battles a $222 million structural deficit and the threat of state receivership.
Kayatta, who authored the amendment, told colleagues the measure would be withdrawn and would not advance to a second reading, according to reporting by The Sacramento Bee. “I made the wrong call in bringing this forward at this time and heard the community feedback loud and clear,” Kayatta wrote, per the outlet's report. The board vice president said the change would effectively be pulled during Thursday's meeting with authorization from board president Tara Jeane, though it technically remains on the agenda because of the district's 72-hour public posting requirement.
A Pay Raise Timed Badly
The stipend increase was made possible by a statewide law change. California lawmakers raised school board member compensation caps for the first time since 1984 when Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1390 in October 2025, amending Education Code Section 35120 effective January 1, 2026, according to the ACSA Resource Hub. Under the new law, trustees in districts the size of Sacramento City Unified can receive up to $3,000 per month, and the Bee's report notes Kayatta drafted the resolution on behalf of the district's policy committee.
Sacramento City Unified was not alone in considering a raise. School boards across the state — including Fresno Unified, Chula Vista Elementary, Oceanside and Modesto — voted to double, triple or quadruple trustee stipends after the law took effect, according to GV Wire. Several of those local board votes reportedly drew their own community backlash over pay increases during tight budget conditions. Kayatta has said board compensation should eventually rise for the district's long-term health, arguing pay has not kept up with inflation and does not reflect current board responsibilities, and that low compensation could discourage lower-income people from seeking a board seat.
Deficit Dwarfs the Debate
The optics were always going to be difficult. Sacramento City Unified is grappling with a $222 million structural deficit, and the Sacramento County Office of Education has said the district must identify $150 million in cash solutions by June 2027 to avoid running out of money and potentially entering state receivership. The district approved a $965 million operating budget for the 2026–2027 school year in June on a 5-1 vote, even as leaders acknowledged severe fiscal solvency risks persisted, according to ABC10.
A major driver of that strain is payroll. The district devotes roughly 91 percent of its budget to employee salaries and benefits — the highest per-pupil personnel spending rate among California school districts, compared with a statewide average of 85 percent, per SCUSD district reports shared on Facebook. That leaves little room for flexibility, which helps explain why trustees eliminated approximately 423 positions in February to close a $113.2 million budget gap, as Hoodline reported at the time.
Rejected Deals and Narrowing Options
The district's options for avoiding a state takeover have been narrowing for months. In July, county-appointed fiscal advisor Luz Cázares rejected a solvency agreement between Sacramento City Unified and its teachers' union that had aimed to access a $160 million retiree health trust to generate nearly $100 million in cash flow, according to CBS News. California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond then declined in August to overturn the county office's rejection, leaving the district unable to tap those trust funds, though Thurmond urged the district and county to keep negotiating, per ABC10's account of that decision.
The stipend proposal itself contained an unusual wrinkle tied to that receivership risk. The draft resolution listed entry into a state loan as an event that would actually trigger the higher stipend, and Kayatta explained the provision was meant to avoid legal uncertainty if a receivership resolution suspended an existing bylaw. Under state law, board members are barred from receiving stipends, benefits or other district compensation once receivership makes the board merely advisory. Kayatta has said trustees' stipends would be eliminated outright if the district took a state loan, and the proposed policy would have tied the raise to the district earning a positive or qualified budget certification, or to state receivership itself.
Those certifications matter because they signal how close a district is to insolvency. School boards classify district fiscal health as positive, qualified or negative each reporting period, and county superintendents review every certification and may downgrade it. A positive certification indicates a district's budget is expected to meet financial obligations for three years, while a qualified certification signals the district may not meet those obligations — and school boards are required to review updated financial projections at least twice each fiscal year.
Withdrawing, Not Abandoning
Kayatta has said the proposal should have been brought forward as a standalone item rather than folded into a broader board-policy update, according to a Facebook post cited in the Bee's reporting. The compensation change had been posted as part of the first reading of that wider policy update before the backlash prompted its removal. Sacramento City Unified will not advance the proposed compensation amendment to a second reading, and Kayatta does not plan to bring the idea back until the district's budget is stabilized.
The episode adds another chapter to a fiscal saga that has stretched over a year, following the district's initial spending freeze disclosed in a $43M deficit warning and a January inquiry into $1.8 million in consultant spending during a hiring freeze, which finance leadership denied at the time. For now, trustees continue to earn $826.87 a month while the district works to close a nine-figure cash gap before next summer's deadline.
