Board Meeting - Good, Bad, & Some Ugly

First, thanks to the folks who attended the meeting and were willing to give their opinions and the play-by-play. Here's the summary:

The BAD: Of course the most lamentable part of the agenda was the resolution to send out layoff notices to teachers (a.k.a. “pink slips”). While such a notice doesn't necessarily mean that a teacher will not have a job next year, it leaves that option open to the district, and as we all all know, given the state of the budget, there will surely be some who will get the dreaded follow-up letter in a a few weeks. This is very sad, since teachers are the heart of the district's mission: They're where the rubber meets the road in education, and with fewer of them the district's “product” will suffer. That is, the education of our children will suffer.

Obviously the school district didn't put itself in this position and it's in a hard spot. But the way it's trying to get itself out is somewhat telling. Board member Cathy Regan made an interesting comment that went something like, “Well, 85% of our budget is salaries, so obviously we have to come up with MOST of our budget cuts from salaries.” Hmmmm - maybe, but does the bulk of that have to come from teacher salaries? Also interesting is that they want to skip over certain teachers in the layoff process, favoring the bilingual teachers over the seniority system. John Cotter, teacher union rep., spoke against this idea, but the deal seems done and is spelled out in the agenda. Of course, the more senior the teachers they can lay off, the more savings, so keeping relatively new BCLADs and laying off more senior people saves more money. They did apparently lay off one district administrator, Stephanie Niess, Administrator of Special Programs. For details, see agenda item 8-a, resolution 13-0910 Exhibits A & B regarding specific position changes and the breaking of seniority ties. Still, it's curious that they only laid one administrator from the D.O. where the big-money salaries are. Nothing against anybody there, but they're all in the $100K+/yr. range. As an example, if they were to lay off the director of Instructional Technology OR the Director of Administrative Support Services, they'd save over $150K. Lay off both of them and that's over $300K. That's quite a few teachers saved. Not that those two are bad people – only a few of us have ever even met or seen them - but neither of them are in-classroom teachers, and most of us seem to agree that teachers in the classroom are more fundamental than program directors at the district level. (Apparently one of them was at the meeting – Nancy Jones-formerly-Cunningham. Maybe they lay off the ones who don't show up to board meetings?)

And somebody else asked in our discussion today why the superintendent doesn't 'lead by example' by voluntarily taking a pay cut himself? Sure, 10% out of a salary that's something like $200K isn't a lot in the bigger salary pie, but it would be a signal that he's willing to share the burden personally, not just the professional difficulties of it. Because those teachers who lose their jobs will be shouldering a VERY personal burden.

The Ugly: Interestingly, the vote was not unanimous to pass the layoff resolution, as Maureen Muir voted against it after saying something like, “I don't think we've looked at all the options yet.” This seemed to throw Cathy Regan out of whack for a couple of minutes, and she described to Maureen the process that got them to the resolution vote last night (budget workshops and such). And both Regan and Carol Skiljan questioned where the money would come from if not from teacher salaries via the resolution, and how they would even be able to make cuts without issuing layoff notices. It was a slightly dicey exchange, but not an obvious right-wrong one, since there's a case to be made for the leeway that the resolution affords the district in dealing with the budget, but also no doubt that teachers should be the LAST to be cut. (Well, ok, teachers and certain school site classified employees – you can't run a school without office staff and custodians.) But one observer said that in her opinion it was a gutsy move on “Mo's” part, as she apparently said she has other ideas of how to find money, risking the wrath of the other board members. It's unclear what her ideas are, so maybe that will be a highlight of the next meeting. In any case, this was the only spectator-sport aspect of the evening.

The Good (you thought we forgot the good, huh?):
A bunch of monetary gifts were accepted for various programs, mostly from EEF, but some from others as well. It was a pile of money, really, almost $190,000! Very cool to see in this current state of affairs. Maybe somebody should put EEF and the other donors in charge of getting over this budget hump. How long does it take to raise $6,000,000? If we had a jog-a-thon every day...

Also, the new technology director talked about his assessment of the district's technology and where it's headed. Basically he said that a lot of stuff is very old and will need to be replaced if the district wants to keep up with the technology Jones'. He said that stuff was old in about four different ways, but his points seemed ok. One person said that she thought he seemed surprised that such old stuff was still running, at which point Carol Skiljan said that educators can keep things running with string. This was when one of the teachers in the audience turned to check for shock from the Noesis-shirted guy in the back row who apparently had no expression. The technology guy then went into talking about the new phones that have been rumored to be on the list of stuff to buy, and he mentioned combining the network and phones together, and cool features that such phones can provide, like allowing people to have their phones 'follow' them if they're moving around the district, and even that the superintendent could answer his office phone from home if he was working from there. While this sounded like something that would be 'ideal', it also sounded a lot like something that should be put off into the indefinite future until after all of the laid-off teachers are re-hired. He didn't seem to be advocating purchasing exactly anything in particular, but Marla Strich was nodding her head so fast in agreement that she looked like one of those bobble-headed dogs that people put in their rear car window. Why does she care so much about new phones? Weird.

Abby Sadat reviewed the budget, which seemed like a long bunch of accounting lingo, but which looked in decent shape on paper. The problem is that his review was for THIS year so far, not for next year, starting in July, which is when the real financial pain will set in. (PS – Who knew that Paul Ecke Central has a $100,000 trust fund? None of us. Nice to have, though they apparently only spend the interest from it, which in this economy is probably about five bucks a month.)
Some jobs for instructional aides will be collapsed together and brought inside as district jobs – currently filled by contracted outside services. A special needs parent in our little group says it was a good move, so we'll take her word for it. Also, it seems to make sense on paper in the agenda.

The Unknown: The superintendent closed the meeting with a discussion of a new strategy that he wants to try when doing strategic planning. Since none of us really know what has ever come out of the strategic planning process except a vague document that looks good when put one-page-at-a-time into a Power Point for the board's self-congrats, we're not really sure what to make of his idea. Maybe it will be good, but the veteran (read: possibly jaded?) district folks among us tend to think that this isn't really going to be different than in the past, only because we have yet to see one of these plans that's actually at all 'strategic'.

Wrap-Up: The board members seemed to have been mostly on auto-pilot as usual, with the possible exception of Maureen Muir's surprise 'nay' vote on the layoff thing. Marla Strich talked about her kid's victorious robotics team at San Dieguito. Cathy Regan rambled a little about something that nobody could quite recall today, and as always, some of them were making plans to travel to various conferences, etc. One event that's apparently coming up is something for which Carol Skiljan is “now in charge of sending out those email invitations”, which she was quick to point out to the group. This item got a quick couple of minutes of chatter, with Bill Parker asking, “Yeah, doesn't that one have a menu?” One observer remarked that he seemed more focused on this opportunity to choose between chicken or fish than on much else during the evening. In closing, that's why we have this blog. Thanks for visiting. Tell your friends.

If you want to see the agenda, click here: March 9th agenda