Seth Rosenblatt’s Blog

Last night the Board officially approved the contract for a new Superintendent of the San Carlos School District, Dr. Craig Baker. You can read the press release here.

I’m very excited about the decision, and having spent some time with Dr. Baker, I’m confident he will be a great leader for our school district. He is currently the Executive Director at the Gardner Center at Stanford University, and he has also been the Executive Director at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. He has had 22 years experience in public education as a teacher, principal, and assistant superintendent, and had a stint as a School Board member, spending two years on the Redwood City School District Board of Trustees.

He has deep experience in education and a collaborative and communication-oriented leadership style which I believe will be a great fit for this community. I believe he will work extremely well with our existing District staff, principals, teachers, and other employees.

We certainly have our share of challenges and opportunities ahead this next year, but I believe that under Dr. Baker’s leadership, we’ll continue our track record of success. Please join me in welcoming him to our district!

Last night, the school Board approved the 2009-2010 school year budget. Of course it contained cuts, and it still heralds potential cuts for next year, but compared to many of our neighbors we actually avoided some of the most egregious reductions in programs. This budget still has us deficit spending almost $300,000 next year, but a three year projection shows that by the end of the third year, we’d stay above the state-mandated 3% reserve level (at approximately 4.1%). To put this in perspective, just last year we had reserves of around 14%, which means this year (2008-2009) we had to significantly exhuast those reserves because of the massive State cuts made AFTER the year had already begun.

Here’s a quick summary of changes for the 2009-2010 budget:

• Measure B, a larger enrollment, a larger contribution from SCEF, and one-time federal stimulus money all helped on the revenue side, but we project (based on the latest Governor’s proposed budget) that we will get an additional 3.5% cut in our “Revenue Limit” (amount funded per child) above and beyond the cuts already made this year
• Class sizes for K-3 are increased to 22:1
• All employees will receive a 2-day furlough with a commensurate decrease in salary (approximately 1%) — the CSEA (classified employees union — the non-teaching staff) hasn’t agreed to this yet, but everyone else has
• Reduction in groundskeepers and night custodians
• Reduction in teaching coaches and teacher professional development
• No current year contributions to our “deferred maintenance” fund or to the future retiree health benefit fund
• Reduction of travel and conference expenditures
• Reduction of district technology expenditures
• Reduction in school site budgets (which largely affect both professional development and other site-specific projects)
• Reduction in funding for the Healthy Cities tutoring program
• Reduction in GATE funding
• Increase in fees for athletic groups to use school fields

Also, many of you already know that our Special Education department has done a tremendous job in actually improving our program while actually saving the District a significant amount of money (this was done by “in-sourcing” services). Without this restructuring, we’d likely have faced at least another $500K in cuts.

Programs and people that were not affected include music, P.E., librarians, counselors, the literacy program, hands-on science, assistant principals, etc.

Many projections are that the State financial situation will get worse before it gets better, so we definitely could be facing more severe cuts a year from now, or in a worst-case scenario, see cuts mid-year. So, on the one hand I’m very thankful that we can get to a budget which does preserve almost all of the key district priorities, but at the same time I remain very cautious about the future financial health of our district and all others in the State, and with that financial health comes our ability to continue to provide a great education to all of our students.

Thanks to everyone for all of their hard work this year and all of the shared sacrifices, and unfortunately we may be all asked to do it again over the next twelve months.

This week I was privileged to attend both the Tierra Linda and Central Middle School 8th grade graduations (unfortunately because of a personal commitment, I was unable to attend CLC’s graduation).

I want to extend my congratulations to all of the graduates, their families, and to all of the staff at those three schools for another great year. With all of the craziness this year particularly with the state budget, it’s good to be reminded that it’s all about these kids. Kids who have successfully passed through our school district on their way to be successful in high school and beyond. It was particularly heartwarming to hear the speeches from the students themselves — they were all quite impressive and articulate.

Obviously our mission this coming year will be to work our hardest to continue to preserve everything about the education in San Carlos that produces such impressive middle school graduates. I look forward to having my own child at TL next year!

The San Carlos public schools end this week, and kids are of course getting a bit antsy for summer. I’m excited to attend a lot of the end-of-year festivities, including the fourth grade picnic at Arundel, graduation ceremonies for CLC, Central, and Tierra Linda, and a few more visits to see teachers at the middle schools. We also have two board meetings this week — Tuesday is candidate information night and Thursday we have our meeting to tentatively approve a budget for 2009-2010. See the Agenda Online Calendar for the agenda and posted documents.

To say it’s been an interesting year would be about as dramatic of an understatement as one could make. San Carlos schools continue to perform at the top of their game, with excellent teachers, superior test scores, and significant enhancements to many of its programs, most notably the incredible improvements made to our Special Education program over the last year. So many people — including teachers, administrators, and other staff — have worked so hard, and the results show. But in an incredible juxtaposition, this all happens in the context of the worst budget crisis since the Great Depression. Since the 2007-2008 school year, our funding has been cut by the State by 12-15% (depending how your measure it), and with 80% of a school district’s expenses in employee-related costs, there’s not much to cut besides teachers and other employees who support vital progams.

But it looks like we will squeak by this year with a combination of new parcel tax revenue, budget cuts, a serious reduction of reserves, and a lot of other hard work. See a more detailed analysis in my post here. However, the State financial situation remains incredibly unstable, and even without any further reductions in State funding, we still face serious cuts again this time next year.

So, I remain both frustrated and proud. Frustrated by a state system which is fundamentally broken and, unless completely overhauled, will not invest appropriately in the education of our children The ramifications of this structural underinvestment will be felt for generations to come. But I am also proud of my local community — the people who work so hard, whether to directly teach or support the education of our children, but also to volunteer, raise money, and of course vote for local measures to fund our schools. It is what makes San Carlos a shining beacon in what are otherwise very rough seas.

Last September I wrote an entry about the first class I attended in this program organized by the Redwood City Chamber of Commerce called “Leadership Redwood City / Belmont / San Carlos” — it is a nine-month leadership development program that provides participants the opportunity for face-to-face meetings and hands-on workshops with experts and key decision-makers from business, government, our health care and educational systems, and the community. In sessions held one full day per month, September through June we learned about issues of vital concern to our cities, and learned how to effectively shape the future of our community. I first learned about this class from Omar Ahmad, our city council member, but also my colleage Carrie Du Bois has gone through the program as well.

It finally wrapped up last Friday, and it was a fabulous program. There were about three dozen “students” in the class, who came from all parts of the community — elected officials, staff members of elected officials, folks who work for local charities, hospitals, and schools, policemen, firemen, community volunteers, and local business people. We learned about so many areas that frankly I had very little exposure to, including housing, transportation, health care, law enforcement, local political structures, etc. Of course, my favorite day was that on education! We also had a some great guest speakers, including U.S. Representative Jackie Spier, California State Senator Joe Simitian, San Mateo County Supervisor Rich Gordon, as well as dozens of other local officials, city and county staff members, and other experts.

They are taking applications now for the 2009-2010 year. I highly recommend the program to anyone in the community who wants to know more about what goes on in our county and wants to get a chance to meet a ton of incrediblly interesting folks who are leaders in our community. You can get more information at fill out an application at the Leadership Class Website.

Or of course feel free to write me with any questions about it.

The superintendent sent out this bulletin yesterday:

Do you have any interest in knowing what it’s like to be a School Board member in San Carlos, or what’s the process for running for office? This November there will be an election for three of the five seats on the School Board. Current school board members are hosting this very informal public board meeting to explain the process of running as well answer any questions about campaigning or serving on the school board.

All are welcome — whether you’re a serious candidate for school board now or in the future, or just want to learn more about how it all works. I encourage you to attend this meeting on Tuesday, June 9th at 8pm in the Central Middle School Library

The Board met last night and gave direction to the administration on building our 2009-2010 budget. Although it is technically not approved until the middle of June, barring any singificant swing in the State’s already awful financial situation, I suspect we are close to having a final budget.

In my opinion, we have a pretty solid budget in what is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. We were able to do this through a very collaborative and deliberate process that involved the board, administrators, employees, and parents. And specifically, our relative good fortune (especially compared to other school districts) is due to a number of factors including:

• The passage of Measure B
• The continual great efforts of the San Carlos Educational Foundation
• Reductions in salaries agreed to by teachers and other employees
• The amazing work done by the Special Ed team to dramatically improve and restructure the program
• Some Federal stimulus money
• The increased enrollment in the District (which translates into more money)
• Contribution from the sites to the District of some of their formerly restricted funds

All of these combined to save a bunch of programs and positions, including:

• Music
• Librarians
• P.E. Associates
• Counselors
• Middle School Assistant Principals
• Literacy Support
• Math support
• Hands-on Science
• Healthy Cities tutoring program
• Majority of teacher development/training
• And many other programs…

Now, of course we did make cuts. In addition to the salary reductions mentioned above, we will likely cut groundskeeping, custodians, supplies, deferred maintenance contributions, as well as payments toward future retiree health benefits. And as we all know, the State situation is fairly unstable, so hopefully we won’t get any worse news from them in the coming year. In any case, we will still face a small deficit this year and a larger one next year, which means barring any positive news from the State, we will likely have to make additional cuts a year from now when looking at the 2010-2011 budget. But one step at a time.

Lastly, note that because a majority of the State cuts happened mid-year, we had to significantly dip into our financial reserves this year to maintain our level of programs. What once was a 14% reserve is now a 4-5% reserve (note that 3% is the State mandated minimum). So, there’s not a whole lot of wiggle room left.

I want to thank everyone who worked so hard to make this happen, especially all of the District staff. But kudos to the whole community, including teachers, parents, and others who participated in Board forums, took our survey, donated to SCEF, and of course voted for (or campaigned for) Measure B. It was the combination of all of these efforts that allowed us to reach an outcome which unfortunately many districts in California can not.

Although it is not reflected on the San Mateo County website last time I checked, the passage of Measure B is finally certified. The School District received notice today. Although we knew it was going to happen, it’s nice to be official. Now the District will officially rescind the layoff notices given to teachers back in March. Thanks again to all who supported this!

The last couple of weeks have had their fiscal (and emotional) highs and lows. After Measure B passed (and with the increased District enrollment), it looked like our budget cuts for this year would be significant, but manageable. At our Board meeting on May 7th, the proposed cuts by the administration for the 2009-2010 school year included a reduction in groundskeeping and custodians, some reduction in supplies, modest reductions in professional development dollars, and a delay in payment to fund future employee retiree benefits.

However, a few things have happened since then. Based on the failure of the May 19th State propositions, the latest estimate is that our budget will be cut an additional $570K both retroactive to this current year (2008-2009) and for upcoming years. The offsetting good news is that we will receive some Federal stimulus money. The net effect will be to roughly offset the cuts for 2008-2009, but since most of the stimulus money is a one-time shot, we still face a significant deficit for this coming year (2009-2010).

Note that even with this offsetting stimulus money, we will have deficit spent over $2 million this year. We have exhausted most of our reserves. To put things in perspective, our District received a reduction of about 15% to our revenue in this year vs. last year, so that is why we effective had a 10% bottom line loss. And as you’re probably aware, the State kept cutting our revenue during the year (7% of our revenue cuts happened after this year’s budget was already adopted), so it’s near impossible to reduce costs when 80% of your expenses are employee-related (and most are bound by collective bargaining agreements).

So before the Board meeting yesterday, we were faced with a 2009-2010 deficit of approx $960K. And this already assumed the additional revenue from increased enrollment, the passage of Measure B, and the cuts in custodians and other areas already mentioned above. In prep for this meeting yesterday, the Administration proposed two things:

• Sweeping “categorical” funds held both at the District and the individual school sites in an amount equal to $365K. Although it would take too long to write a complete explanation of this, this was possible due to new legistation that allowed money previously designated for restricted purposes to be used by a school district for any purpose. But the result of this would be less dollars at each school site to spend on specific programs. But all of the principals agreed that sweeping this money was the lesser of two evils.
• Making an additional $213K in cuts, which would include 20% of K-4 Music, 40% of K-4 PE, 27% of Library Associates, and all site professional development for teachers.

This would have been absolutely devastating, and to say the least, I was not looking forward to yesterday’s meeting. Even if we did all of this, we would still be deficit spending by almost $390K next year. Obviously a lot less than the $2 million this year, but since our reserves are much lower, that $390K deficit would be the absolute maximum deficit we could have and still keep above our State-mandated 3% reserve level three years out (which if you don’t, you are taken over by the State, which would be the absolute worst-case scenario).

However, at the meeting, we did get some late-breaking good news from our CBO. Apparently the County informed us that we are due more stimulus money tied to expenses in Special Education. Since our (and everyone’s) Special Ed costs far exceed the restricted dollars given to fund it, these extra dollars would essentially be able to offset money in our general fund that would otherwise go to pay for Special Ed costs. This amount came to approximately $285K in 2009-2010 and $255K in 2010-2011.

So, essentially, we are now in the position where we could apply that extra money to the $213K in cuts and avoid making any cuts to Music, P.E., Librarians, or the majority of professional development. So, that’s the good news.

The bad news includes the following:

• Barring a dramatic economic turnaround, the budget discussion next year will be equally as hard. We may need another $200-$500K in cuts (or additional revenue) to stay above the 3% reserve level.
• This assumes the State doesn’t cut more, and as we all know, it hasn’t done a great job at projecting its finances recently
• We still need to renew Measure D, which expires at the end of the 2011 school year. Failure to do so will give us another hole about equal to $1 million per year.

So, I think we may have barely avoided the worst cuts this year, but next year could get ugly. It’s going to require a lot of hard work and some good luck. Also, as I mentioned yesterday, I think we have to seriously work on two major initiatives:

• Working with our employee bargaining units to be creative and figure out a way to reduce employee costs. The math just doesn’t work out any other way. Obviously I want to pay our teachers as much as we can, but we really need to work together to address this crisis. Our teachers did step up this year with effectively a cut in salary by reducing the work year, and I appreciate that. We need to continue that spirit of cooperation.
• We may need to work with the San Carlos Educational Foundation (SCEF) to borrow and/or use money from their endowment. Their endowment was set up last year based on a $1.5 million gift from the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. The original purpose of the endowment was so we could have more money for additional programs. However, as we struggle to hold on to just some of the basics, I think we’ll need to work with SCEF to look to that endowment as a potential emergency fund.

The next step in this budget process is that the Board will give its direction to the Administration at our meeting next Thursday (5/28), and that input will be used to start building the budget, which then won’t be officially approved until June. As always, I encourage everyone to attend those meetings!

Thanks to everyone in the community who has worked so hard to maintain our great education — raising money, helping Measure B pass, advocating for their children, etc. Let’s just hope we can slow down this rollercoaster ride a bit.

I’m sad to report that our Superintendent, Steve Mitrovich, has decided to retire at the end of this school year. This is a personal decision by him, which I’m disappointed by, but I completely understand and respect. You can read the press release from the School District and read the article in the Daily Journal.

I like Steve a lot, and he accomplished quite a bit in his short tenure in San Carlos. First and foremost, he hired a top notch administrative team, led by our Chief Business Official and our Director of Educational Services. He also hired our fabulous Special Education Coordinator and two great principals. Hiring great people is often one of the most difficult tasks — yet one of the most important ones — for any leader to do. Steve also brought a very steady leadership style to what was an extremely difficult year with our worst budget crisis ever. I think he did a lot to improve relationships with teachers, parents, and the larger community.

And on a personal note, I’ll miss him. He’s just a good guy who always wanted to do the right thing, and I enjoyed spending time with him. Of course I wish him the best in this next chapter of his life.

The School Board has been very proactive in making sure we have a very smooth transition. We have decided to hire an interim Superintendent for the 2009-2010 school year, and have already hired a search firm and identified at least two serious candidates. We expect to have interviews starting right away and hire someone by the end of June. Steve will help in this transition.

Best of luck Steve, and thanks for leaving the District a much better place than you found it!