Over the past year, themes of communication and collaboration have been preached in the La Jolla Cluster Association, which includes principals, parents and teachers from the five local public schools in the San Diego Unified School District. But the impending alignment of the math curriculum across the district elicited strong opinions at the group’s April 10 meeting, its last of the current school year.
Looking ahead to 2025-26, San Diego Unified is adopting Eureka Math² California as its elementary school math curriculum. The main question posed at the meeting was whether schools could supplement the new curriculum with other platforms.
In particular, La Jolla Elementary has been using Everyday Mathematics for some 20 years. Since submitting a waiver request to adopt the curriculum decades ago, Friends of La Jolla Elementary, a nonprofit educational foundation, has secured funds to keep it going.
La Jolla Elementary is the only school in the La Jolla cluster to use Everyday Mathematics. Several teachers called it a success.
“I think everyone can agree [that] we are willing to try Eureka, but we’re not totally willing to necessarily give up Everyday Math,” teacher Aimee Lansky said. “We still want to use things that are amazing from that program in some of the classrooms.”
“It just feels like we’re going backward instead of forward,” she added.
Other speakers suggested a “softer implementation process” for the new curriculum or extending Everyday Mathematics for a year to provide a supplement to Eureka.
Cody Petterson, SDUSD’s board president, said there is value in individual schools’ methods, but an alignment of curriculum ensures there are more instruments at the district’s disposal to evaluate student success.
“There’s a balance you always have to strike between autonomy and centralization,” said Petterson, whose District C includes La Jolla. “You never want to lean too hard on centralization, but at the same time, it’s very hard to create vertical alignment and to create horizontal alignment with other principals in the cluster or principals in the neighboring clusters.
“We don’t want it to be a straitjacket that actually hurts people’s learning, but … if there are best practices, we want to adopt them and be able to compare apples to apples so we understand what different sites are doing.”
Mitzi Merino, the district’s Area C superintendent, told the La Jolla Light that the district can work with site leaders to consider adding platforms like Everyday Mathematics, but any additional programs would the districtwide Eureka curriculum, not supplant it.
“In SDUSD, we believe all students deserve access to a rigorous, high-quality and standards-aligned curriculum that provides equitable opportunities for academic success,” Merino said.
“We believe that our educators and school leaders know their learners best, and we their efforts to enrich and enhance the district-adopted mathematics curriculum to ensure that learners are ed in reaching their full potential.”
Petterson said his takeaway from the meeting is that there was a breakdown in communication with teachers about adopting the new program and that any unclear aspects of the curriculum shift should be addressed.
Parent Megan DeMott, chairwoman of the Cluster Association, said she would connect with Merino and the district’s math team to try to get answers to remaining questions.
Other cluster news
San Diego Unified budget: Cutting the district’s projected budget deficit for next school year has been a point of discussion since last year. In October, the district identified $64 million in central office reductions, bringing the projected deficit down to $112 million from $176 million. Other efforts have been made to keep cuts as far away from classrooms as possible.
“We have a plan to fully reduce our deficit to zero. We are going to balance the budget,” Petterson told the Cluster Association.
Last month, district leaders outlined a strategy to eliminate the remainder of the projected deficit for the 2025-26 budget with increased revenue projections, limited or no layoffs and an expected $19 million increase in the positive balance in the unrestricted general fund for 2024-25.
The latter “is attributable to increases in attendance ($8 million), along with interest earned ($4 million), solar credits ($1 million) and reduced utility costs ($2 million) and other expenses ($4 million),” the district said in a statement.
Officials added that their strategy would reduce the projected budget gap for 2026-27 to $113.4 million from $210 million.
“Too often, budget conversations focus solely on cuts, but that has not been the case here,” interim Superintendent Fabiola Bagula said in the statement. “We have actively pursued ways to increase revenue … more accurate attendance projections, advocacy at the state and federal levels and philanthropic efforts to expand funding opportunities.”
SDUSD said last month that about 30 notices of possible layoffs would be sent to employees.
The district said it “is able to use existing employees to address vacancy needs while simultaneously addressing the budget gap by reasg employees from the central office and school sites to these critical vacancies.”
It added that the 968 employees who filed paperwork to take the Supplemental Early Retirement Plan, or SERP, was about 27% higher than originally anticipated.
The district said it will continue to work on the 2025-26 budget, review the governor’s May revision of the state budget and issue layoff notices if needed. The board will adopt a final budget in June.
Meanwhile, the district is navigating a stream of federal changes, including President Donald Trump’s executive order March 20 to shut down several functions of the U.S. Department of Education and send many of its functions to the states.
Petterson said the order could affect the timeliness of Title 1 funding — designed to help schools with high concentrations of students from low-income households — aid for military families, special-education funding for students with disabilities and $50 million in attrition services for free breakfasts and lunches.
Next meeting: The La Jolla Cluster Association next meets at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 9, at the Muirlands Middle School library, 1056 Nautilus St. Two additional dates — Jan. 15 and April 16 — are confirmed, with the possibility of additional dates to be announced. For more information, visit lajollacluster.com. ♦
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