About this blog I am currently a Governing Board Member of the San Carlos School District, elected November 2007. I created this site to keep in touch with folks who want to know more about what is happening in the District and what it's like to be a Trustee.
Please note that ANY OPINION EXPRESSED HERE IS PURELY PERSONAL AND DOES NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT OFFICIAL POSITIONS OR POLICY OF THE SAN CARLOS SCHOOL DISTRICT NOR THE OPINION OF ANY OF MY COLLEAGUES ON THE BOARD.
I encourage everyone to visit the District web site as well as attend School Board meetings.
Note that I reserve the right to edit, reject, or delete posts based on spelling, grammar, readability, or my judgment of what is appropriate discourse.
If you're interested in getting updates when blogs are posted, please send an e-mail to seth@rosenblatt.org |
Last Fall I posted an entry about our schools’ API scores. As I pointed out then, all of our schools have both excellent and improving scores. I have also stated many times that, by design, our four K-4 elementary schools offer an equally excellent education. Although most parents and District staff understand that to be true, there are some folks that have a misunderstanding based on what they read on websites or based on comments from realtors. Despite that all of our schools easily exceed the state API excellence threshold of 800, sometimes folks report that Heather School only has a score of 861, compared to 907-917 for the other schools.
Variation in scores over 800 tell us very little about the quality of the school. Although these scores are the only system publicized by the state and federal governments for evaluating the effectiveness of schools, we need to understand their limitations. My colleage Mark Olbert wrote a blog post based on a fantastic analysis of our API scores related to the student population. He does a much better and more detailed explanation than I will give here, but essentially we must control for students’ location as well as students in special education (since Special Ed classes are not distributed evenly over the schools).
If one looks at the API scores of the four schools for general education students who live in San Carlos, the APIs of the four schools all fall within the range of 929-933! I encourage you to read Mark’s blog for a more detailed explanation, but suffice is to say that this proves what the District administration has been claiming for many years — there is no difference in the quality of the education among our elementary schools! We’re extremely fortunate to live in such a community.
Unfortunately a good chunk of the remainder of the school year will be devoted to trying to solve our current budget mess, and this process kicked off in earnest with a Board study session we had on Tuesday, Janaury 26th. With the recently proposed State budget, our friends in Sacramento whacked education again. For us, the latest estimate is a further decrease in revenue of about $700,000. This was on top of the $900,000 we already knew we’d be in the hole for next year. Furthermore, these estmates already take into account the recent mid-year reductions we made (as I wrote in early December, we eliminated five positions at the District office — almost 20% of the District office staff — and for four of those folks, their last day was yesterday).
That leaves us with a known problem of $1.6 million. However, as we have learned, the situation is more likely to get worse and not better, so our staff estimates that it would be more prudent to look at it as a $2.2 million problem — a combination of revenue enhancements and cost reductions equaling that amount starting next fiscal year would eliminate our deficit and keep us above the 3% minimum required reserve level. However, only a 3% reserve level hardly gives me great comfort (we were at 14% only three years ago, so it’s easy to see how the State can wipe that away quickly). Also, this assumes that we renew the Measure D parcel tax, which expires June 2011. We need to have another discussion on when to put this renewal on the ballot — definitely look out for that!
By the way, if you didn’t catch that, I did say “revenue enhancements.” I’m very excited to report that Dr. Baker and his team are aggressively pursuing ways to increase our top line, including more aggressive grant proposals as well as looking at launching some fee-for-service businesses, such as pre-school, after care, and summer camps. It’s a brilliant idea, and long overdue (although SCCLC has had a model for some years). Like any new business, we must remain conservative as to its possibilities for the purpose of budgeting, but I do agree with our Superintendent that it has tremoundous potential. Accordingly, the Board agreed that a target of around $250K in next fiscal year is prudent for the purpose of budgeting.
That leaves us with the cuts. At our Board meeting Tuesday night, the Superintendent presented what was essentially a discussion piece developed by the Admininstration to look at restructuring the way we deliver some programs. Unlike in the past when we considered eliminating certain programs, these ideas were more about sharing responsibilities and/or reducing services rather than eliminating them. Of course, such reductions would still involve reducing personnel (as that’s where the savings lie), but they are definitely more creative solutions that would lessen the impact on the students. Some of these ideas include reducing library support, using middle school music instructors to also teach elementary school stuents, etc. These are all just concepts at this point — the Board will of course debate these and other ideas over the next few months. However, the Board did generally agree that the target for these types of programatic restructuring cuts would be about $750K. So, with $250K in revenue enhancements, that leaves us with a target of about $1.2 million in reductions that would need to come from employee compensation. Generally speaking that can happen two ways (or a combination of the two) — reductions in the average compensation per employee, or a reduction in the number of employees. The former means things like salary cuts; the latter means things like increasing class sizes (and both areas are matters that need to be collectively bargained).
This bring me to process. How are we going to approach this problem and discussion, as well as get input from the public? Unlike last year where we did a few large “town hall” style meetings, it is more likely that the Superintendent will conduct a series of smaller, school-site meetings at every school to discuss these issues with parents and concerned community members and bring back that input to the Board. Please be on the lookout for notices from your principals on these meeting days and times. Also, we still have the budget survey from last year, and that will continue to be a resource for staff and the Board. Many of you may recall from last year that we have a March 15th deadline for sending out “pink slips” to certificated employees. So, for example, if we think that increasing class sizes is at all a possibility, then the District would have to send out notices to potentially affected teachers. It’s of course a wacky system as the budget isn’t completed until June (and like last year, you can then rescind the termination notices – but of course affected employees have already started looking for other jobs by then), so you have to make a decision by March 15th to send out these notices based on a ton of uncertainty.
So, if you’re seriously depressed by the time you’ve read this far, I do want to add some perspective. Yes, the State is treating us like crap. Yes, the ramifications for California are potentially catastropic. Yes, the structural problems in the state render it unlikely that this will turn around for very long time. But we in San Carlos have an amazing history of making lemonade from lemons. We still have great schools by every measure, dedicated and inspiring teachers, a top-notch administration and staff, and passionate and devoted parents. Although it may be cold comfort to some, San Carlos has it much better than so many other places in the State, including some our close neighbors (e.g., Redwood City is facing some unfathomable reductions in their programs). This is due largely to the fact that, despite being a Revenue Limit district, San Carlos kept a large financial reserve, got the community support to pass two parcel taxes, and has a strong and growing Education Foundation. I encourage everyone to attend these budget meetings and to continue to support the San Carlos Educational Foundation, which I know is tough in these times. Also please attend Spring Fling on March 6th when we can together celebrate all that we have accomplished as a community despite the lemons that the State delivers to us.
At the Governor’s State of the State address, he vowed to “protect education” despite the addititional $20 billion shortfall that the State is facing through next fiscal year. I guess I’m not sure what dictionary he uses, but the word “protect” may have a different definition in his than it does in mine.
In the Governor’s proposed budget that came out this month, there is indeed another cut to K-12 education. It includes what is termed an “administrative cut” of $191/child and a negative COLA (cost of living adjustment) of -0.38%. For the SCSD, this means another funding reduction of almost $700,000.
These cuts are incredible, and above the $900K in reductions we were going to need to make for next year anyway (which is above the $700,000 in cuts we already made mid-year this year by eliminating administrative positions). And of course, most people who follow school finance think this is the good case scenario! A more conservative projection suggests we may need to cut up to $2,000,000 in our budget for next year!
To put that in perspective, that is almost 10% of our entire budget, and comes on top of the 18% reduction in revenue we’ve already incurred over the last three years. We’re in for very rocky times, and it’s just shameful that our state is so short-sighted.
I will give periodic updates on this subject throughout the school year. The School Board is having a special budget workshop Board Meeting on January 26th where we will discuss all of our options, which include program cuts, potential revenue generation ideas, as well as advocacy efforts. In the very short term, how everyone can help is to support the San Carlos Educational Foundation (including attending Spring Fling on March 6th)– every dollar raised by SCEF is as critical as ever!
In June I blogged about the hiring of our new Superintendent. At the time, because of the short time frame we had, we assumed we would hire an “interim superintendent” for a single year and then go out for a broader search for a permanent Superintendent. Well, we got lucky and found someone in Dr. Craig Baker who could have been that permanent Superintendent. I am extremely excited about everything that Dr. Baker has accomplished in the last five months, and it quickly became clear that he is the right person to continue to lead this District. That sentiment is universally shared among administrators, teachers, other employees, parent leaders, and other community members. He has quickly established himself as one of the best superintendents in the entire area.
Last night the Board agreed that it will forgo a new superintendent search and instead work with Dr. Baker to extend his contract. Despite the monumental issues that we face, he has done an incredible job and accomplished so much in such a short period of time. A natural leader, he is a thoughtful, out-of-the-box thinker. He is a great communicator, and he works as hard as anyone I’ve seen. It’s been a pleasure to work with him, and look forward to his making a giant difference in San Carlos for years to come.
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