Santa Barbara Unified Board of Education

17 meetings on our record, 2 of them from the past year and 15 with unconfirmed dates · 12,491 students · 5 members on our roster

Latest · Sep 15, 2026: Santa Barbara Unified board approves San Marcos High health careers academy construction resolution Play 1:01:28
Newest meeting we have: Sep 15, 2026 · District's board page ↗ (it may list later ones)

Also on the board: Celeste Kafri, Board Member · Rose Muñoz, Vice President

Recent meetings

What the board took up lately

Board meeting · 4 h 05 minTuesday, September 15, 2026Santa Barbara Unified board approves San Marcos High health careers academy construction resolutionSpeakers: William Banning, Rose Muñoz, Sunita Beall, Celeste Kafri and 1 more

Play 1:01:28

Board meeting · 2 h 59 minTuesday, August 25, 2026AI in schoolsEnrollmentPhones in schoolReading and test scoresSpeakers: William Banning, Sunita Beall, Celeste Kafri

Watch

The board

Who talks on this board

We compare who talks only where members sat for 8 or more meetings on our record; this board has 2 from the past year on our record.

Runs the meetingWilliam BanningPresident · shown, not ranked7meetings where we identified their voice2clipsnamed at 7 meetings · 2 clips

Members · listed by nameSunita BeallClerk9meetings where we identified their voice5clipsnamed at 9 meetings · 5 clips Gabe EscobedoBoard Member5meetings where we identified their voice—no clip yetnamed at 5 meetings Celeste KafriBoard Member7meetings where we identified their voice3clipsnamed at 7 meetings · 3 clips Rose MuñozVice President4meetings where we identified their voice—no clip yetnamed at 4 meetings

Meetings on our record

All 17 meetings on our record

Clips

What board members said

How, um, if we have a new teacher come in, are we— if they are not LETRS trained, are we keeping them out of the K-3 space until they are trained?Sunita BeallClerk · Santa Barbara Unified Board of EducationWatch the full meeting from 1:13:55
I might suggest also that the issue of capacity is likely quite different in elementary schools than secondary schools, because as we have learned, as we have been talking about the 7-period day, part of the capacity of what kind of electives we can offer depends on how many students are there.William BanningPresident · Santa Barbara Unified Board of Education · Aug 25, 2026Watch the full meeting from 2:36:53
I think on ETS specifically, what I was referring to was also that we have a one-on-one iPad program that is hugely, hugely expensive. …Celeste KafriBoard Member · Santa Barbara Unified Board of EducationWatch the full meeting from 3:48:53
I guess a question I have, because basically this budget doesn't tell us what has changed from last year, like how are we spending different differently than last year. …Celeste KafriBoard Member · Santa Barbara Unified Board of EducationWatch the full meeting from 3:07:45

On the map · Phones in school

August 25, 2026

The board discussed phones in school.

Its first meeting on phones in the year we read. A faint dot on the map: we had read too few of its earlier meetings to call it new.

Watch the film Open the meeting

Meeting time

Where the board's meeting time went

Budget and finance16%4%–28%

Public comment12%9%–17%

Ceremony and recognition1%0%–4%

Safety and discipline1%0%–3%

The two readers didn’t agree on 16% of the time; it counts toward no topic, so every share above is a floor.

Not shown: facilities, closures and enrollment, curriculum and instruction, student services and special education, labor and personnel, governance and policy, routine business, other subjects, whose checks haven’t passed

Public comment

Of the 17 meetings on our record, we counted public speakers at 7; 7 had at least one.

Federal district ID 0601414 · student count from the federal 2023-24 count · meeting videos posted by the district