Tuesday’s San Diego Unified School District board meeting was a strategy session to come up with $176 million by next June. “Since our last report, we have met with our school communities, parents, teachers, principals to discuss the realities of having to address such a significant deficit,” said Dr. Fabiola Bagula, the interim superintendent. The district said the initial plans to mend the gap include $64 million in revenue increases, federal funding and money saved from vacant positions. San Diego Unified parents will be getting a data collection form that asks them to fill out their monthly income. This is so the district can qualify for more state funding for their low-income students, which is about 60% of students across the entire district. Another strategy is enacting an early retirement plan. The money that comes from this depends on how many of the almost 5,000 eligible employees take the buyout. All of this still leaves $112 million dollars on the table for next year, and the board said it needs to be careful what gets cut. “Programs like VAPA (Visual and Performing Arts) and ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) are the things that wake students up at 8:30 in the morning with a smile on their face, ready to go to school. We can’t cut those programs,” said Quinton Baldis, student trustee. Board member Sabrina Bazzo agreed. “We shouldn’t automatically just say, ‘Oh, we’re going to cut that 20%.’ We need to look at all the programs across the board and see if that’s going to make that program really suffer,” Bazzo said. Once that’s taken care of, the 2025-2026 school year is staring at a $211 million deficit. “It’s frustrating,” said Drew Rowlands, operations deputy superintendent. “It’s just the nature of the beast and how we have to get through it. You know, we rely on the state. We rely on the federal government. We take that in and do the best we can to make it work for supporting our students.” The next budget meeting is in February.