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. |
The San Mateo County School Boards Association (SMCSBA) just announced the winners for the 2010 Kent Awards. The awards are given to outstanding and innovative programs either in the classroom or outside the classroom as well as district-wide programs. Applicants must demonstrate their programs promote student success, employ a high degree of creativity, and demonstrate transferability.
Two of the programs in San Carlos received awards — the Brittan Acres Elementary Special Day Class Program and the The Peer Mediation Program at Tierra Linda Middle School. The Special Day Class Program is of course the product of the amazing efforts by our staff over the past few years to create a superior integrated special ed program that has delivered outstanding results for students. The Peer Mediation Program is a unique student-centered intervention program that promotes a safe and positive environment for middle school students.
Here is the Kent Awards 2010 Press Release from SMCSBA. The Kent Awards ceremony will be Monday, May 10th at 6pm at the Doubletree Hotel in Burlingame. San Carlos teachers and administrators will be honored at the event for their great work. Congratulations again!
The following letter was sent out jointly from the Superintendent, School Board, and San Carlos Teachers Association today regarding the March 15th day for potential termination notices to teachers. The letter pretty much says it all.
To the San Carlos Community,
We are writing to inform you about a difficult step the San Carlos School District (SCSD) trustees had to take. At the March 11th Board meeting, the trustees voted unanimously to notify a number of teachers that their positions with the District may not exist in the 2010/2011 school year, which starts this September. This letter is to give you some context for that decision, and hopefully answer some questions you may have regarding these notices, which teachers will receive on March 15th. Please know that everyone —the Board, the District and the San Carlos Teachers Association (SCTA)—is working together to minimize the impacts this action will have. In many ways, the notifications that will be sent out over the next week reflect the District’s preparation for the “worst case.” While that must be done to protect as much of our educational program as possible, it is our sincere hope that we can find a way to retain our great teachers and minimize the impact on our children.
As background, you may be aware that the California state budget crisis is having a major impact on the SCSD (and indeed all school districts in the state), with our district facing a $2.8 million budget shortfall. In response, the District eliminated five district office positions last November, and is looking at restructuring certain programs and improving efficiencies to save money across the District. Revenue enhancement measures, including writing grant proposals and running fee-based summer and after school programs, are also being aggressively pursued. Even with these changes, we still have a significant deficit, which we can no longer cover out of reserves because those have been exhausted by the State’s long-term financial crisis. While an additional parcel tax is a theoretical possibility, times are hard for many San Carlos families, and we are already facing the need to renew our 2003 parcel tax before it expires in June, 2011. Given all of this, we unfortunately must look at reducing compensation expense to close the remaining gap. In so doing, the district is considering the possibility of increasing class sizes at certain grades, which would in turn eliminate some teaching positions.
By law, if a school district is even considering reducing or eliminating a position currently occupied by a “certificated” employee (which includes teachers), the district must give notice to that teacher by March 15th of the prior school year. Even though these are commonly referred to as “pink slips,” they are not termination notices. Rather, they are a notification that the District may eliminate/reduce a certificated employee’s position for the following school year. The District can rescind these notices at any time, as happened last year after the Measure B parcel tax was passed. However, the law is very clear—if a school district does not deliver these potential termination notices by March 15th, it cannot eliminate those positions for the following school year, regardless of how necessary that might be to balance the budget.
The list of which teachers receive these notices is based on very strict criteria mostly related to their seniority and their qualifications to teach the specific areas or programs that may be eliminated. If termination notices are rescinded, they would essentially be rescinded in seniority order. The identity of the notified teachers is confidential information, and the District will not publicize it. Individual affected teachers may themselves decide whether and in what manner they wish to share the information.
It is frustrating to everyone that preliminary lay-off notices must be given now because we have very little information on what next year’s education funding will look like. We hope to know more in May, when the Governor’s “May Revise” budget is issued, but recent history has shown that even that is not a particularly good forecast for what the Legislature will ultimately decide. If a conservative forecast at that time shows the District’s financial situation to have improved relative to the “worst case scenario,” it is likely the District will rescind as many of the preliminary termination notices as possible. However, the timing for this is tight, because by law teachers must be notified no later than May 14th of their final employment status for the 2010-11 school year.
We know that this process will cause anxiety among the affected teachers and our community, who do not want to see great staff leave. However, we must comply with the law. The District and the San Carlos Teachers Association are working together to keep our employees fully-informed, and will continue to look for ways to rescind as many of the notices as possible.
This is a very difficult, heart-wrenching situation, as it affects the lives of wonderful people who have served our children well. But our district, and our community, are strong enough to get through it if we support one another as we strive to continue providing an excellent education for our children.
Sincerely,
Craig Baker
Superintendent of Schools
Sarah Amos
President, SCTA
Mark Olbert
President, Board of Trustees
For the last few months, I’ve been contemplating putting together a video to explain how education finance works in California. It is an incredibly complex topic, and requires a bit of history and context setting. Doing this was partly inspired by a series of presentations done by SCEF, talks by Joe Simitian on the topic, as well as the CCS Meeting which I wrote about in January.
Well, now the first version of that video is done and posted online. Although my graphics are a bit primitive and the audio isn’t perfect, I think it does a good job capturing the history of California school finance, how it works now, some of the structural problems that tie our hands, and what we can do about it. It’s a little long — 40 minutes — but if you can take some time, I encourage you to take a look (it’s divided into chapters, so it can be viewed in multiple sessions).
Click here to get to the video. Let me know what you think!
In what can hardly be described as shocking, California was not selected as one of the finalists in the Federal Race To The Top (RTTT) program. 41 states applied to be eligible for this program, which could include awards of potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. However, most education leaders in this state never thought California had a serious chance of competing because of all the structural issues we have at the state level.
The finalists are: Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Tennessee. Winners will be announced in April. Here is the Washington Post article on the finalist announcement.
Here is a related article on how the scoring worked for determining finalists. The rubric included items like making education funding a priority, demonstrating significant progress in raising achievement and closing gaps, developing and adopting common academic standards, turning around the lowest-achieving schools, ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charter or other autonomous public schools, and improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance.
I have stated many times that I thought it was a low likelihood that California would be eligible for this program, and even if it were, the benefit for a small district like San Carlos would not likely be significant. That said, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to be eligible for Federal money (assuming the the requirements are consistent with our values), so I suspect California will try again in the second round of RTTT in June. However, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
The following is a memo sent out from the Superintendent today regarding the budget and the status of the contract negotiations with our certificated teachers’ union. I think he sums up the situation very well.
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Dear San Carlos Community Members,
I write to give you an update on the status of negotiations for the 2010-2011 school year between the San Carlos School District (SCSD) and the San Carlos Teachers Association (SCTA). As of this week, the parties have reached “Impasse” in the negotiations. I want to give some context to what this means and describe for you our next steps.
Many of you have heard me say these are extraordinary times and resolving our current financial crisis will require extraordinary measures. It is understandable, therefore, that this year’s negotiations would require much discussion and debate. It was evident in our last negotiating session, however, that no new ideas were being exchanged, and it became clear that these discussions would not yield results. Because of this, the District decided to file paperwork stating that the parties had reached Impasse. This is a required step to move the process to the next phase.
I realize you will likely have a number of questions regarding this matter, so I have put together a fact sheet to address a few questions you may have:
What is the reality of the current budget situation in our school district?
The California state budget situation has gotten progressively worse throughout this year. When we approved this year’s budget in June 2009, we believed we had at least a $700,000 budget shortfall for 2010-2011 that would have to be addressed in order to continue to stay above our required 3% reserve level and to stop deficit spending. That $700,000 problem has now grown to a $2.8 million problem, as per the governor’s latest budget proposal.
Because of the severity of this problem, the Board voted earlier this year to accept my recommendation to immediately eliminate five administrative positions at the District Office. I was deeply saddened to see these wonderful people and highly valued positions go; but given the magnitude of the crisis, this move was necessary to keep cuts as far away from the classroom as possible. In addition, at the School Board Meeting on January 26, the administration and the Board discussed the prospect of additional revenue enhancements and restructuring of some programs. These program changes would include reducing the elementary music program, cutting back library support, reducing time for Middle School Vice Principals, just to name a few.
The combination of the central office staff reduction (approx savings: $650K), the restructuring of out-of-classroom programs (approx savings: $750K), and additional revenue enhancements (approx: $250K) will take care of nearly 60% ($1.6 million ) of our total budget problem, but it still leaves us with a $1.2 million shortfall.
Since roughly 80% of all district expenses are personnel-related, the only significant area for reduction the District has left to consider is compensation. This could include a combination of salary reductions (including some furlough days), or the elimination of certain positions across all employee groups, including further cuts to district administration, to teachers and/or classified staff.
What was the substance of the negotiations between SCSD and SCTA?
SCTA and the District have been meeting over the past several months to negotiate changes to existing labor contracts. The parties had already negotiated wages and furlough days for the current school year. Therefore, the District’s proposals have been focused only on next school year (2010-2011).
Given the magnitude of our current budget crisis, the District’s proposal to SCTA had to amount to the equivalent of a 7% reduction in total costs/compensation, across the board. This could come in many forms and combinations, including salary reduction, furlough days, elimination of positions (increasing class sizes), and freezing expected salary increases for next year (also known as “step” raises). While these are certainly painful cuts, the total compensation reduction to teachers would represent only 35% of the total budget problem.
The negotiating teams of the District and the SCTA last met on February 8th. The SCTA repeated its last offer that there be no compensation changes in the 2010-2011 school year, and rejected the various proposals brought to the table by the District. Without an exchange of proposals for 2010-2011, the District’s next step was to inform the state that the parties have reached Impasse.
What does Impasse really mean?
“Impasse” is a defined step in a process required by California Government Code to begin a process to resolve disputes in negotiations between a school district and any bargaining unit (union) representing employees of that district. As part of the Impasse process, the State assigns a mediator to bring the parties together and attempt to mediate negotiations and look to find agreement. It will take some time for the State to assign a mediator and additional time to have the required mediated negotiations. Due to the fiscal crisis, a large majority of school districts in California will reach Impasse with their bargaining units this year.
What happens next?
Either the mediator will bring the parties to agreement or he/she will fail to do so. If the mediator determines that a settlement is unlikely to be reached, he/she will move the process to the next stage, known as Fact Finding. In Fact Finding, a neutral third party will be appointed by the State to conduct a series of sessions with all parties and gather all relevant information. After his/her study of the issue, the Fact Finder will present a recommendation to the School Board. Such recommendation could be close to either party’s position or somewhere in the middle. This is not, however, a binding recommendation – the School Board can ultimately accept or reject such implementation. If the School Board rejects the Fact Finding recommendation, the District has the ability to implement its last and best offer to the bargaining unit.
What are other issues with the timeline?
These processes (Impasse and Fact Finding) could continue well into summer. In the end, the District is still required to meet its statutory obligations such as delivering a budget by June 30, 2010, and, most importantly, being ready to open the schools in late August. Given this, it was important that the parties either make immediate progress or act swiftly to move the process forward, in order to reduce uncertainties for all concerned– the District and its employees, community members, and students– and develop a prudent and realistic budget for next year.
What can you do?
I encourage you to attend future School Board meetings where the budget will be discussed. Although specific discussions about negotiations will happen in “closed session,” all general budget discussions and recommendations, as well as approval of any final employee contracts or lay-offs will happen in open sessions. A schedule of future Board meetings is posted on our Agenda Online site at http://sancarlos.csbaagendaonline.net.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to contact me. I can be reached at cbaker@sancarlos.k12.ca.us.
Warm Regards,
Craig Baker, Superintendent
San Carlos School District
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!
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