Palo Alto Unified School District wants community input before it cuts roughly 15% of ongoing spending over the next two school years.

The district has opened a Budget Values Survey for families, staff, students and community members. It takes about five minutes and does not ask respondents to choose among specific reductions. Instead, the district says it wants to learn what the community values most before any cuts are proposed.

The survey is step one of a three-part process. The district will use the results to develop budget options, then measure each potential cut against the community's stated priorities.

"This work is hard, and I am not going to pretend otherwise," Superintendent Jason Glass wrote in his Friday, Sept. 18 weekly update. "What I can promise is that you will see how we got from your input to our recommendations, and that nothing will be decided without transparency and input."

The 15% target spans the 2027-28 and 2028-29 school years. As the Palo Alto Daily Post first reported in August, the district faces $33 million in cuts for 2027-28 and an additional $10 million for 2028-29. Layoffs are on the table.

The deficit grew sharply after two setbacks this spring. Voters rejected Measure B on June 2, killing an $800-per-parcel tax that would have generated about $15 million a year, according to Palo Alto Online. Two weeks later, the Board of Education unanimously approved labor contracts giving employees a 10.4% raise over two years and $10,000 in bonuses.

Glass, who started as superintendent on July 1, acknowledged the scale of the challenge at an Aug. 18 board meeting. "These conversations are going to make people scared and angry. We have to have them anyways," he said at the time, as reported by the Daily Post.

The Palo Alto Educators Association has called for the district to audit spending on administrators and consultants before cutting classroom positions, the Daily Post reported on Aug. 30. Union president Tom Culbertson said declining enrollment made a reckoning inevitable, noting the district's infrastructure was "built for a lot more students."

Enrollment has dropped roughly 20% over the past decade, according to former board members Todd Collins and Ken Dauber. They wrote in a Sept. 12 guest opinion in Palo Alto Online that the district had $100 million in reserves when school ended in June but was budgeted to lose $66 million by next June. Those figures reflect the former board members' characterization of district projections.

No closing date for the Budget Values Survey has been announced. The district has not said when it will move to step two of the process.