Sacramento City Unified School District’s superintendent resigned this week amidst a major budget crisis. The district is facing a $113 million total deficit, and the risk of financial insolvency and a state takeover.
“Both Superintendent Allen and the board believe that creating space for new leadership will best position the district to address and overcome its current challenges,” Board President Tara Jeane said at the school board meeting Thursday. Allen served the district for 30 years.
The board appointed an interim superintendent, Cancy McArn, the district’s current chief human resources officer who has been an educator since 1997.
“With this honor and just an overwhelming sense of pride and dedication and everything that we need to move forward, I accept this role and I look forward to continuing this work together,” McArn said.
Nikki Milevsky, the president of the Sacramento City Teacher’s Association, believes that McArn can put the district on a positive path.
“I’ve appreciated Superintendent McArn’s commitment, wisdom and willingness to make tough decisions even when we didn’t agree with them,” Milevsky said. “Now, there are harder decisions that the district has to face.”
Interim Superintendent Cancy McArn sits at the front of the school board chambers on Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026.Ruth Finch/CapRadio
The education board has responded to the deficit with a new fiscal solvency plan that aims to lift the school district out of the deficit and avoid a state receivership.The school board said the plan is an evolving document to help guide the district to a healthy budget.
In a state receivership, something only 10 other school districts in California have ever had to do, the school district receives an emergency loan from the state and loses control over its own finances.
Taylor Kayatta, first vice president of the board, said that a state takeover like this would be a disaster for the district.
“State receivership is not an option,” Kayatta said. “It’s a surrender of our community’s voice that would be truly devastating to our district, our city and our communities.”
According to former SCUSD Superintendent Jonathan Raymond, the kind of financial problems that the current district’s administration is seeing come down to one core problem: spending money they don’t have.
“Using one-time money to put on salary schedules or to make ongoing expenditures that are then dependent upon having ongoing revenue,” Raymond explained.
After “raising the alarm” about the previous fiscal insolvency plan not being implemented, Kayatta said that the culture in the district’s administration played a part in the deficit.
“We need to confront an uncomfortable truth, and that is that the crisis was predictable and it was preventable,” Kayatta said. “It was the result of a district culture that treated transparency as a threat and oversight as an inconvenience."
April Ybarra, second vice president, said she too had experienced a “hush culture” that’s harmed the district.
“Supplanting has been a poor practice that continues to get swept under the rug,” Ybarra said. “I personally attended a meeting where a principal came in and happily announced that he was given permission to supplant funding.”
Supplanting occurs when an organization applies federal funds to the programs they’re earmarked for, but takes state or local funds from that same program and uses them somewhere else at their own discretion.
The community steps up
Garrett Kirkland, president of United Professional Educators and principal of Hiram W. Johnson High School talks with an attendee on Thursday, Feb. 6 2026.Ruth Finch/CapRadio
The fiscal solvency plan proposed by the district will reduce all budgets by 20%. Another proposed solution was instituting 12 furlough days for nonunion district employees. This increase in furlough days, essentially mandated unpaid time off to save the district money, was met with resistance.
Daniel Rolleri, who said that his public comments were representative of himself alone and not that of his supervisor or colleagues, said that he wants to do his part to help the district during this time, but nonunion voices need to be heard.
“I feel there’s an unfairness about the process and quadrupling furlough days,” Rolleri said. “It feels like a target attack on members like myself, who don’t have the shield of a union or collective bargaining agreement.”
The SCUSD community had a lot to say, and there 36 speaker cards filled out for public comments with people coming to the podium to speak for over an hour.
Glennielyn Pacheco, who represented the Youth Development Support Services department at the district said that she stood in solidarity with the SCUSD staff.
“These are not numbers on paper. These are real people,” Pacheco said. “Dedicated employees who serve students every day, who now face uncertainty about their ability to support their families and maintain stability in their lives.”
In response to public comments regarding the furlough days, first vice president Kayatta proposed that the twelve furlough days be cut from the plan entirely. Other cost saving measures include diversion of funds meant for art supplies and freezing all non-janitorial supply purchases through the end of the year.
Students of SCUSD were also at the meeting, and are also preparing to deal with what the crisis entails. Owen Naqica, 2027 class president at West Campus High School, said he’s been having constant meetings with his officers.
“If the district decides that they cannot pay for our graduation,” Naqica said, “We need plan A, plan B, and plan C, because these things can happen depending on the severity of the situation.”
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