Sonoma County’s third-largest school district Tuesday began cutting $5 million from its $47 million budget. The Cotati-Rohnert Park school board approved layoff notices for 28 full-time positions but left the lion’s share of budget cuts unmade pending ongoing negotiations with employee unions over deep salary and benefit cuts.

An estimated 31,000 ballots from Sonoma County voters still need to be counted. The final tally could change the outcome of school board races in the Piner-Olivet and Cotati-Rohnert Park school districts. Plus: Why did it take so long to get results from Petaluma on Election Night?

UPDATE 9:45 AM: Sonoma County election workers still need to count tens of thousands of mail-in ballots turned in Tuesday, potentially putting several tight contests in question, including a handful of school board races in communities around Sonoma County. It could be Thanksgiving before the tally becomes official.

The shift in power that changed the political landscape across the country on Election Day trickled down to local school board races in Sonoma County. Incumbents in five of the 12 competitive races are expected to lose their seats. “I think the parents have spoken and stepped up and are tired of business as usual,” said Mark Galipeau, chairman of the teachers union PAC in the Cotati-Rohnert Park school district.

Newcomers Marc Orloff and Andrew Longmire grabbed two of Cotati-Rohnert Park’s three school board seats in Tuesday’s election. Two longtime incumbents, Leff Brown and Eric Kirchmann, were deadlocked in a virtual tie for the final seat. The outcome will likely hinge on mail-in ballots that have not yet been counted.

The Cotati-Rohnert Park School District has faced a perfect storm of declining enrollment and a sharp drop in state funding. Today, we turn the WSC spotlight on four of the candidates who hope to oversee the county’s third-largest school district. They say better times are coming, but their strategies for getting there differ.

As districts across Sonoma County scramble to make ends meet with approximately 25 percent less funding from Sacramento than they received three years ago, officials are turning a sharp focus on attendance rates that are tied to state funding.

Five candidates are seeking three seats on the Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified School District Governing Board. See how they answered the WSC questionnaire on local issues.

Sonoma County educators are expressing anger over revelations that the longtime executive director of the California School Boards Association had charged thousands of dollars of personal expenses on association credit cards — including $11,000 at casinos — all while making more than $540,000 a year.

Mountain Shadows, Rohnert Park’s oldest middle school, closed Friday with the graduation of its final class. It joins two elementary schools in Petaluma and Santa Rosa that have also closed for good under increasing budgetary pressure and declining enrollment. It doesn’t get any easier: Sonoma County schools face an additional $17.5 million in cuts in the upcoming school year.