PATERSON, N.J. – Paterson schools business manager Daisy Ayala seems to be getting the message.

In February, as district officials put together a plan to cut dozens of teaching jobs for the third year in a row and struggled to find ways to control other costs, Ayala was in Long Beach, California for a conference on the taxpayer’s dime, the Paterson Press reports.

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Two months later, while officials were pushing other budget cuts to avoid a tax increase, Ayala was at a different school conference in San Diego, California. In total, Ayala was scheduled for a total of four trips in the current fiscal year, at a total cost of about $6,900, according to the news site.

“The optics are bad,” school board president Christopher Irving said. “I was completely disappointed in the whole budget process, and I’m further disappointed for her to take two trips like that while we were in the midst of that process. I’m not going to correlate the two, but it just doesn’t look good.”

All of Ayala’s taxpayer-funded trips were approved by the Paterson school board, the superintendent and the state board of education, but district officials refused to discuss the total cost for district employees to attend out-of-state conferences or identify other employees who went along with Ayala.

But they did confirm on Monday that Ayala decided to skip a planned conference for the New Jersey Association of School Business Officials that was scheduled for June 7 through June 9 in Atlantic City.

“In hindsight, it may be best that she didn’t go,” Irving said. “Given the matters we’re dealing with, it may have been a distraction.”

Irving and other board members, as well as union officials, questioned the spending on conferences after the Paterson Press exposed the spending earlier this year, and district spokesman Terry Corallo said Ayala make the call not to go to Atlantic City last week.

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The trip was expected to cost $786.

It’s unclear what exactly motivated Ayala to reconsider her plans, and Corallo wasn’t exactly forthcoming about what influenced her decision.

“It must be a very slow news day if Ms. Ayala’s professional decision to attend a NJ conference is ‘newsworthy,’” Ayala wrote in an email to the news site. “Ms. Ayala is this district’s business administrator (a senior leadership position) and she does not need to explain to the media why she’s made a decision to not attend a specific conference.”

Ayala – who is the third highest paid employee in the district with a salary of $183,600 – has avoided questions about her expensive travel, relying instead on other officials to justify her trips.

Regardless, the district is expected to cut about 200 employees, including dozens of teachers, as well as after-school programs and busing services to get through next school year.

Paterson teachers union president John McEntree Jr. told the Paterson Press he thinks Ayala made the right call to cancel her latest conference trip, considering the severity of the cuts.

1. “She shouldn’t be going anywhere outside of 90 Delaware Avenue,” he said, referring to the district’s headquarters.