Beginning September 1, members of the Chula Vista Elementary School District Board of Education will be eligible to receive $3,000 per month, up from $750 - a 300% increase that raises annual base compensation from $9,000 to $36,000 per trustee.
The vote came August 12, with Board President Lucy Ugarte, Vice President Francisco Tamayo and Clerk Jessica Castillo-Tolston approving the increase. Trustees Delia Dominguez Cervantes and Keren Ramirez Dominguez voted against it. The district currently identifies those five as its Board of Education members.
The increase will reportedly push the district's annual spending on board compensation to approximately $223,000 and place Chula Vista Elementary trustees among the highest-paid school board members in San Diego County, despite the district having spent much of the past year confronting declining enrollment, deficits and proposed staffing reductions.
And the timing is difficult to ignore. Only six months earlier, teachers and parents packed a district board meeting as trustees considered sweeping staffing reductions designed to help balance the district's budget. In February, trustees voted to eliminate the equivalent of roughly 100 full-time non-teaching positions throughout Chula Vista Elementary and postponed a vote involving another 43 teaching positions. Because many jobs were less than full-time, the proposed reductions were expected at the time to affect as many as 78 employees, including teachers, counselors, classroom aides and other support workers.
At that meeting, employees openly pleaded with the board to find savings somewhere else. One Harborside Elementary teacher who had received a layoff warning told Voice of San Diego that she had only recently obtained a permanent teaching position and feared losing the job while caring for her ill father.
Trustee Castillo-Tolston acknowledged the human cost of the reductions but defended the need for action, telling the publication: "Nobody wants to do it, but we have to," while emphasizing the district's obligation to remain fiscally responsible. The district's financial situation subsequently improved substantially.
Gov. Gavin Newsom's revised state budget included additional education funding, while retirements, resignations and internal fiscal adjustments ultimately enabled Chula Vista Elementary to rescind layoff notices that had been sent to 41 teachers earlier in the year. But even following that reprieve, the district was projecting an approximately $16 million current-year deficit in June.
That means the teachers ultimately kept their jobs, but it would be inaccurate to suggest that the financial crisis or staffing cuts never happened.
In December 2025, district administrators had warned trustees that Chula Vista Elementary faced a roughly $30 million deficit and would need approximately $5 million in cuts as pandemic-era funding disappeared, state finances weakened and enrollment declined. Officials specifically contemplated reducing counseling and behavioral-support services financed with temporary federal money.
Nor was 2026 the district's first recent round of major staffing reductions.
In March 2024, the Board approved eliminating 132 full-time-equivalent positions, including 77 certificated and 55 classified positions, as federal COVID-19 relief money that had financed many of those jobs expired. The affected classifications included instructional assistants, school health clerks, custodians, noon-duty supervisors, technology technicians, psychologists, social workers and performing-arts teachers.
That 2024 action requires some important context. Chula Vista Elementary was not projecting a budget deficit at the time, and elimination of a "position" did not necessarily mean an employee became unemployed. Many certificated employees — including dozens of temporary "impact teachers" hired to address pandemic learning loss — were expected to return to positions they previously held, while the district said some classified employees could potentially move into other vacancies.
Still, the scope of the restructuring was substantial: 132 positions were removed from the district's staffing structure only two years before trustees voted themselves significantly higher compensation.
Notably, Tamayo, who supported this month's board compensation increase, was the lone trustee to vote against eliminating the classified positions during that 2024 action. The certificated reductions passed unanimously among the trustees who were present.
By early 2026, however, the circumstances were different. Chula Vista Elementary was no longer merely allowing temporary federal programs to expire. Declining enrollment meant declining state funding, and trustees were confronting an actual structural budget problem.
The district had for years been something of an exception to enrollment losses affecting other South County school systems. Rapid housing development in eastern Chula Vista had helped fuel enrollment growth and even construction of new schools. That advantage has begun disappearing. Some west Chula Vista schools have experienced particularly dramatic declines, with Harborside Elementary losing more than one-fifth of its enrollment over the preceding decade and Loma Verde losing roughly one-quarter.
Against that backdrop, the Board's decision to increase its own compensation is certain to invite questions about priorities. The raises themselves are legal.
They were enabled by Assembly Bill 1390, legislation authored by Assemblymember José Luis Solache and signed by Gov. Newsom in October 2025. The measure amended California Education Code Section 35120 and substantially increased compensation ceilings that had gone largely unchanged since 1984.
For school districts with prior-year average daily attendance between 25,000 and 60,000 students, the law increased the maximum monthly compensation from $750 to $3,000. That is exactly the amount Chula Vista Elementary trustees approved. The law took effect January 1, 2026.
AB 1390 did not, however, automatically increase trustee salaries. It merely raised the statutory ceiling and left individual school boards with the authority to decide whether their own compensation should increase and, if so, by how much. The California School Boards Association, which sponsored the measure, described it as an effort to modernize 40-year-old stipend limits and make school-board service more accessible to people who could not afford to devote significant time to the position for minimal compensation.
Solache similarly argued when Newsom signed the bill that serving as a trustee now requires considerable time devoted to research, training and public engagement, and that antiquated compensation could effectively limit school-board service to people wealthy enough to absorb that unpaid workload. Those are legitimate policy arguments.
But AB 1390 also created a politically awkward situation: elected officials are permitted to vote directly on how much they themselves will be paid. Chula Vista's board chose the maximum permitted for a district in its attendance category.
Tamayo defended that decision to Voice of San Diego, noting that trustee compensation at Chula Vista Elementary had remained unchanged since 1984 and emphasizing that board service extends considerably beyond appearing at monthly public meetings.
Trustees review district material, respond to parent concerns, visit schools and communicate with lawmakers, he said. Tamayo also argued that the board waited until the district's financial outlook improved before taking up compensation and pointed out that other South County school districts have increased trustee stipends as well.
The new law has indeed triggered substantial trustee raises elsewhere in California. Fresno Unified trustees, for example, voted earlier this year to increase compensation from $2,111 to $4,500 per month. Other districts have likewise moved toward the newly authorized limits.
But Chula Vista's increase is especially conspicuous because it is an exact quadrupling: $750 becomes $3,000 overnight. For each trustee, that means an additional $27,000 per year in base compensation.
And the salary increase comes against a broader recent record of financial and administrative turmoil at the district. In October 2025, the state Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team reported significant weaknesses involving Chula Vista Elementary's budgeting, payroll, hiring and personnel systems. Auditors found that departments were relying on inconsistent and sometimes duplicative records and recommended creation of a centralized position-control system, stronger internal controls and better coordination among business, human resources and payroll employees.
Just months later, the district agreed to pay more than $360,000 in connection with the departure of former Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Jason Romero. The agreement called for $217,324 to Romero and another $147,500 toward his attorneys' fees and costs. The district and Romero said his departure was voluntary, that no wrongdoing findings had been made against him and that he had not resigned in lieu of termination.
That expenditure does not directly relate to trustee compensation, but it is relevant to understanding the unusual financial and administrative environment in which the board's raise was approved.
SanDiegoVille sought an explanation directly from the people responsible for governing that environment.
On August 22, SanDiegoVille emailed all five members of the Chula Vista Elementary School District Board of Education - Lucy Ugarte, Francisco Tamayo, Jessica Castillo-Tolston, Delia Dominguez Cervantes and Keren Ramirez Dominguez - as well as Superintendent Eduardo Reyes and district administrative personnel, asking why trustees believed a 300% increase was appropriate, how the $3,000 figure was selected, what the total annual cost including benefits would be and how the Board reconciled the raise with the district's recent deficits and threatened layoffs.
Solache similarly argued when Newsom signed the bill that serving as a trustee now requires considerable time devoted to research, training and public engagement, and that antiquated compensation could effectively limit school-board service to people wealthy enough to absorb that unpaid workload. Those are legitimate policy arguments.
But AB 1390 also created a politically awkward situation: elected officials are permitted to vote directly on how much they themselves will be paid. Chula Vista's board chose the maximum permitted for a district in its attendance category.
Tamayo defended that decision to Voice of San Diego, noting that trustee compensation at Chula Vista Elementary had remained unchanged since 1984 and emphasizing that board service extends considerably beyond appearing at monthly public meetings.
Trustees review district material, respond to parent concerns, visit schools and communicate with lawmakers, he said. Tamayo also argued that the board waited until the district's financial outlook improved before taking up compensation and pointed out that other South County school districts have increased trustee stipends as well.
The new law has indeed triggered substantial trustee raises elsewhere in California. Fresno Unified trustees, for example, voted earlier this year to increase compensation from $2,111 to $4,500 per month. Other districts have likewise moved toward the newly authorized limits.
But Chula Vista's increase is especially conspicuous because it is an exact quadrupling: $750 becomes $3,000 overnight. For each trustee, that means an additional $27,000 per year in base compensation.
And the salary increase comes against a broader recent record of financial and administrative turmoil at the district. In October 2025, the state Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team reported significant weaknesses involving Chula Vista Elementary's budgeting, payroll, hiring and personnel systems. Auditors found that departments were relying on inconsistent and sometimes duplicative records and recommended creation of a centralized position-control system, stronger internal controls and better coordination among business, human resources and payroll employees.
Just months later, the district agreed to pay more than $360,000 in connection with the departure of former Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Jason Romero. The agreement called for $217,324 to Romero and another $147,500 toward his attorneys' fees and costs. The district and Romero said his departure was voluntary, that no wrongdoing findings had been made against him and that he had not resigned in lieu of termination.
That expenditure does not directly relate to trustee compensation, but it is relevant to understanding the unusual financial and administrative environment in which the board's raise was approved.
SanDiegoVille sought an explanation directly from the people responsible for governing that environment.
On August 22, SanDiegoVille emailed all five members of the Chula Vista Elementary School District Board of Education - Lucy Ugarte, Francisco Tamayo, Jessica Castillo-Tolston, Delia Dominguez Cervantes and Keren Ramirez Dominguez - as well as Superintendent Eduardo Reyes and district administrative personnel, asking why trustees believed a 300% increase was appropriate, how the $3,000 figure was selected, what the total annual cost including benefits would be and how the Board reconciled the raise with the district's recent deficits and threatened layoffs.
SanDiegoVille subsequently followed up after receiving no response. As of publication, none of those contacted had responded to the inquiry.
That silence is particularly notable because the questions concern a decision made by elected public officials involving public money. The trustees may have entirely defensible explanations for their votes, but three members affirmatively chose to increase their own compensation by $27,000 per year, and all five were offered an opportunity to explain or comment upon that decision directly for this story.
Tamayo has separately defended the increase in comments to Voice of San Diego, but neither he nor the district responded to SanDiegoVille's questions before publication.
The Board's decision therefore lands at the intersection of two competing arguments. One is that California spent four decades compensating school trustees at levels increasingly disconnected from the responsibilities of overseeing enormous public institutions. Chula Vista Elementary educates roughly 28,000 students, manages hundreds of millions of dollars and employs thousands of people. Asking elected trustees to perform consequential public work for $9,000 per year may discourage people without significant personal financial resources from serving.
The other argument is much simpler: timing and optics matter. Within roughly two years, this district has eliminated 132 pandemic-funded positions, confronted another round of reductions involving roughly 100 non-teaching positions, threatened dozens of teaching jobs, mailed preliminary layoff notices to 41 teachers, warned of deficits measured in tens of millions of dollars and undergone an outside audit that found substantial weaknesses in core financial and personnel systems. Then three trustees voted to quadruple their own compensation.
Those facts do not prove the raise was irresponsible. Nor do they mean that every abolished position represented an employee who permanently lost a job. Some of the district's most alarming fiscal projections have improved, and the threatened teacher layoffs were ultimately avoided. But those distinctions do not erase the central juxtaposition.
Earlier this year, Chula Vista Elementary employees stood before the Board wondering whether their jobs would survive the district's financial problems. Beginning September 1, the trustees sitting on the other side of that dais will be eligible to collect four times as much as they did before.
For the three members who approved the increase, the explanation is that 1984-era compensation no longer reflects the demands of governing one of California's largest elementary school systems. For taxpayers, teachers and support employees who have spent the past several years hearing about expiring funds, declining enrollment, position eliminations and fiscal responsibility, there may be another question:
If the district could find the money for a 300% raise for its elected board, why did no one from that board respond when asked to explain it?
Originally published August 27, 2026.
That silence is particularly notable because the questions concern a decision made by elected public officials involving public money. The trustees may have entirely defensible explanations for their votes, but three members affirmatively chose to increase their own compensation by $27,000 per year, and all five were offered an opportunity to explain or comment upon that decision directly for this story.
Tamayo has separately defended the increase in comments to Voice of San Diego, but neither he nor the district responded to SanDiegoVille's questions before publication.
The Board's decision therefore lands at the intersection of two competing arguments. One is that California spent four decades compensating school trustees at levels increasingly disconnected from the responsibilities of overseeing enormous public institutions. Chula Vista Elementary educates roughly 28,000 students, manages hundreds of millions of dollars and employs thousands of people. Asking elected trustees to perform consequential public work for $9,000 per year may discourage people without significant personal financial resources from serving.
The other argument is much simpler: timing and optics matter. Within roughly two years, this district has eliminated 132 pandemic-funded positions, confronted another round of reductions involving roughly 100 non-teaching positions, threatened dozens of teaching jobs, mailed preliminary layoff notices to 41 teachers, warned of deficits measured in tens of millions of dollars and undergone an outside audit that found substantial weaknesses in core financial and personnel systems. Then three trustees voted to quadruple their own compensation.
Those facts do not prove the raise was irresponsible. Nor do they mean that every abolished position represented an employee who permanently lost a job. Some of the district's most alarming fiscal projections have improved, and the threatened teacher layoffs were ultimately avoided. But those distinctions do not erase the central juxtaposition.
Earlier this year, Chula Vista Elementary employees stood before the Board wondering whether their jobs would survive the district's financial problems. Beginning September 1, the trustees sitting on the other side of that dais will be eligible to collect four times as much as they did before.
For the three members who approved the increase, the explanation is that 1984-era compensation no longer reflects the demands of governing one of California's largest elementary school systems. For taxpayers, teachers and support employees who have spent the past several years hearing about expiring funds, declining enrollment, position eliminations and fiscal responsibility, there may be another question:
If the district could find the money for a 300% raise for its elected board, why did no one from that board respond when asked to explain it?
Originally published August 27, 2026.
