MDUSD - Mt. Diablo Unified School District Blog: Recent Episodes
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Effective Monday June 13th, I will sunset the MDUSD Blog. I am finding myself with less time to manage the blog and it has devolved into a place for argument for the sake of argument rather than a place for constructive discourse. I have not been keeping up with other blog sites, but last time I checked there were plenty of sites in our community where a person can go and shout at the screen.
The other change that will occur is that I will no longer operate a camera system that broadcasts Board meetings. The school district has the ability to broadcast meetings on the school district's radio station and those who can't attend have the ability to listen remotely. Paul Strange has been helping me to get the broadcast equipment and technology set up for each meeting and that process has been difficult for me to manage. At some point the school district may want to invest the money necessary to set up a better quality meeting broadcast system, but at this point I'd say that is not likely in the near term. Paul Strange originally put together the equipment and technology to broadcast our meetings, but the system has significant shortcomings.
To all who have been a part of constructive conversations on my blog, I deeply appreciate our discussions.
As always, I remain accessible via e-mail and phone.
Sincerely,
Gary Eberhart
Below is the text from a memo just released by Superintendent Steven Lawrence regarding questions that are being asked by community members about a District charter high school:
Mt. Diablo USD News Update
Where Kids Come First
May 20, 2011
CHARTER SCHOOL INFORMATION
Over the past weeks, community members have raised questions about charter schools. Below, we have compiled the most frequently asked questions and the answers to them.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF A DEPENDENT CHARTER?
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· Dependent charters are schools that have been converted from an existing public school in the district to a charter school in its entirety. Though rare, districts have opened new small high schools or programs as dependent charters.
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· The authorizing board is legally responsible for the budget development, special education services, governance, debts, and other liabilities of the dependent charter.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF AN INDEPENDENT CHARTER?
- · Independent charters are organized by 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations and are independent legal entities with their own governing board.
- These charters are responsible for securing their own facility but can file a Proposition 39 request to use a district facility at below market rates.
- · Independent charters are responsible for their own insurance, budget, hiring, employment rights, and special education services.
WHAT WOULD THE FISCAL IMPACT BE ON OTHER DISTRICT SCHOOLS IF CLAYTON VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL (CVHS) CONVERTS TO A CHARTER?
- · If any District high school converts to a charter, the district would have to pass along additional funding to that school which would then have to be cut from elsewhere in the District. In this case, if CVHS converts to a charter, the District will have to provide the school an additional $1.651 million beyond the current revenue being generated by CVHS. This is due to the following State funding formula for conversion charter schools:
The State uses the amount that unified districts receive per student (currently $4,876.08) then subtracts the Charter School funding per student amount at the high school rate (currently 5,808.00). This $931.92 per student difference must be made up by the District budget. Therefore, with CVHS’ current enrollment a conversion to a charter would create a reduction to the district budget of $1.651 million.
- · Should CVHS elect to convert to a charter, the District must develop a plan for an additional $1.651 million cut to the remainder of the district. Therefore, the Superintendent will invite all district stakeholders to meet to address these cuts.
WHAT IS THE STATUS OF THE CVHS CHARTER PETITION?
This is not a District-lead process. The details of the charter and timetable are up to the individuals developing the CVHS charter proposal.
Should the district receive a charter proposal, it has thirty days to hold a general public hearing on the proposal. The District also has sixty days from the date of receipt of the petition to grant or deny the charter petition.
- This number assumes that the Governor’s tax extensions fail to make it onto the ballot. The amount will be slightly higher if the Governor’s budget is approved.
What follows is the text from a memo that was just released by Superintendent Steven Lawrence regarding the Governor's May Revise:
Mt. Diablo USD News Update
Where Kids Come First
May 20, 2011
MAY REVISE QUESTIONS
We’ve been getting some questions related to the Governor’s most recent May Revision. Below are questions and answers to some of the most important issues. Much of the information in this News Update has been supplied by those who work with the District as budget advisors as well as our attendance at the School Services of California workshop on the Governor’s May Revision today.
Does the May Revise provide more money for K-12 education above his January proposal?
Yes, it provides $3 billion more to Prop 98 funding above Governor Brown’s January budget proposal.
Then why is everyone saying we aren’t going to see any additional money at the local level?
Because the Governor proposes using almost all of the new money ($2.88 billion of the $3 billion) to pay back the K-12 and community college deferrals. Over the past several years, the budgets approved by Governor Schwarzenegger have included deferring payments to K-12 districts and community colleges. In Governor Brown’s January budget proposal he continued this trend by recommending that the payments that we were supposed to receive in April, May and June of this year be deferred to July 2012. This would have deferred these payments a full 13 to 15 months which would have created significant on-going cash flow issues for school districts. In the May Revise, Governor Brown proposes taking some of the increased State revenues to basically put the payments back into the original time frame. Therefore, we don’t receive any additional funding it just helps with cash flow.
Most of the remaining portion of the $3 billion increase (about $221 million) will go to schools (on a yet to be determined formula) to cover the costs of the Governor’s new proposal to shift all AB 3632 mental health costs from counties to schools. At this time, it is not clear that the level of funding MDUSD will receive from this new funding mechanism will match the $4.4 million in services our students received through AB 3632 funding.
In the Mt. Diablo Unified School District our best estimate is that this permanent shift of the responsibility for mental health services to the District will create another unfunded mandate in the amount of $3.2 million per year. Our estimates indicate that the amount that will be provided by the State for mental health services will be about $37 per ADA or $1.2 million. Given that the costs associated with MDUSD students for mental health services was $4.4 million this year, the total unfunded mandate is expected to be $3.2 million annually.
So the May revise basically proposes giving school districts the same overall funding levels that were proposed in the January budget?
Yes.
How much is that again?
Essentially, funding is flat year-over-year, that is, the Governor proposes to fund schools at the 2010-11 spending levels. This year, MDUSD received $5,206 as our Revenue Limit per student. Again, the shift of the AB 3632 responsibilities and funding from counties to school districts has not been clearly articulated. What is clear is that the District now bears the financial responsibility for providing mental health services for students and the State is not going to provide the District with funding that is adequate to do so. This is yet another unfunded mandate.
So what happens to the projected $349/ADA cut that the Contra Costa County Office of Education recommended districts use in their Second Interim Budgets in March?
It’s still in play. As you recall, the $349/ADA cut estimate was a best guess as to what the total K-12 cut could be, should the tax extensions fail. The Governor’s May budget continues to rely upon almost the same level of tax extension revenues as proposed in January. He still needs the same number of Republican votes (four) for his new proposal as his January budget proposal, and thus far he hasn’t been able to secure those votes. Many people are recommending that districts continue to budget for the same level of downside risks due to the possibility that the Legislature may fail to extend State taxes as required by Governor Brown’s budget proposal.
So should we amend our 2011-12 budgets to reflect any changes proposed in the May Revise?
No. We are being advised to make no changes in budget planning and assumptions until we have more information and certainty as to what the final budget will be. It continues to be a highly volatile and uncertain budget for 2011-12, one dependent on too many variables.
Isn’t School Services of California advising school districts to budget to the Governor’s May Revise? Why would the Mt. Diablo Unified School District budget more conservatively?
School Services of California has said to budget to the Governor’s May Revise, but don’t spend the money. We are recommending to the Board to use the more conservative numbers that are based on the State taxes not being extended and if they are extended, we will add expenditures back into the budget. We are required to submit a balanced budget in June 2011. We likely won’t know the outcome of the efforts to extend State taxes for months. If the efforts to extend State taxes fail, the cuts would likely come to the District by way of mid-year budget cuts. School districts determine their staffing levels prior to the beginning of the school year and it is almost impossible to achieve significant budget reductions mid-year, which would place the District in a very poor financial position if mid-year budget cuts become necessary.
Isn’t this advice counter to what the Governor and Department of Finance staff suggested when they strongly encouraged districts to build budgets based on the May Revise number of $52.4 billion (a $3 billion increase)?
The administration sent a decidedly mixed message. On the one hand they want to avoid the scenario where they encourage school districts to begin dismantling education before we know a final outcome. On the other hand, if you read the May Revise documents carefully, it is clear that the additional $3 billion would not increase local spending levels over January. Furthermore, other parts of the budget documents as well as statements by both the Governor and his staff continue to reference the possibility of up to an additional $5 billion cut to schools should the tax extensions fail and an all-cuts budget results.
We are being advised to stay the course until we have more certainty. At a time when many school districts across the State are filing qualified and negative budgets and some districts are even facing State takeover, we are not comfortable gambling with the future of our students.
Many of us in the public education space have been waiting to see the Governor's May Revise and now it's HERE. Before the ink was dry on the Governor's May Revise I was already getting calls from local media wanting to get the District's take on the additional $3 billion in the Governor's budget for k-12 education. I was thinking to myself, what additional $3 billion? Was I listening to the governor of a different state speak and thought it was Governor Brown? I could have sworn the documents that I had read were indicating that we were going to see more cuts.
The State's education budget is the most complex financial document on the planet. I guess that's why most people don't take the time to look at it.
One simple concept that pertains to education spending is Prop. 98. In a nut shell, prop 98 was passed by voters in 1988 and ensured that a minimum of 39% of the State's budget had to be spent on education.
Today the Governor said that he would increase the amount of money that would be spent under prop 98 and the crowds cheered. When you dig a little deeper you'll see that it's just not true. What the Governor is proposing is that rather than the State operating the mental health services for children and paying for the program through Counties, now all mental health services for children will be provided for by school districts. The State says that they will reimburse a portion of the costs, but we're not sure at what level. What is clear is that now the State will consider that additional spending as an expenditure that falls under prop. 98's guaranteed minimum. In other words, they are taking money that they were already spending that was outside of prop. 98 and now including it under prop. 98 which allows the State to reduce spending under prop. 98 because with the additional mental health spending included, they are over the required 39% minimum.
That is just one factor of the new proposed budget. There is also reference to extending current State taxes, something that the Republicans have vowed not to allow. So if those tax extensions don't occur as predicted in the Governor's May Revise, cuts to education will have to be made and those cuts will likely be made mid-year. Our school district establishes it's budget by June 30th each year and we are forced by mandate to commit most of the revenue in the budget at that time. Trying to enact mid-year spending cuts is next to impossible. For instance, teachers have been guaranteed a job, as required by law, by March 15th each year for the following year. So if the Governor creates a new budget in December 2011 that requires the district to make significant cuts that school year, we will not be able to lay off any teachers because of State Education Code Mandates. If we as a district believe that mid-year cuts are possible, we will have to budget for them now and hope for the best. If we want to remain financially solvent, we budget for the worst case scenario and hope for the best.
More analysis is needed for sure, but I wanted to get the information that I had out there. What have you heard about the budget? Do you think that the Governor has produced a May Revise that will help our schools? How do you feel the State Legislature and Governor are doing? Is the education of our students important enough to look once again and local revenue solutions.
Please feel free to comment.
State Senator Joe Simitian is pressing for changes to California parcel tax rules. In a move that could mean more to the quality of California education than any recent legislation, California Senate Constitutional Amendment 5 would lower the percentage necessary to pass a local parcel tax to 55%. The change would also require that parcel tax funds not be spent on administrative salaries and would require a citizens tax advisory committee be formed to oversee expenditures of parcel tax dollars.
In the Mt. Diablo Unified School District our community has been supportive of the District passing a parcel tax at levels significantly higher than 55%. If this measure is passed, I am confident that our students would benefit greatly. I will place on the next agenda a resolution to support the efforts to bring about these changes.
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At the Board meeting on April 12, 2011, the Board ratified tentative employee agreements. As a part of those agreements, the District will implement three furlough days this school year. The dates will be May 6th, May 27th and May 31st, 2011. What we end up with is a three day weekend towards the beginning of May and a five day weekend at the end of May. These are the first furlough days that impact students directly, but they will not likely be the last. With a State budget that's such a mess, we will likely implement furlough days during the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 school years. It's really a shame that we are forced to take instructional time away from our students and it's a shame that our employees have to take a cut in pay to balance the State budget.
Just to be clear, the furlough days this year will be May 6th, 27th and 31st, 2011. Next year's furlough days have not been identified yet.
The Teachers Union is currently surveying their members to determine how things are going at each of our school sites. I have read through the survey and find the questions very good. I think it will be great to get an understanding from the teacher perspective how the schools are doing.
I'd like to take that same effort to the community, but what questions should we ask? Given the financial restrictions that we are under, we really need to prioritize our efforts and spend our time addressing the community's highest concerns. The other issue is how can we conduct the survey and get positives as well as negatives?
So I have created a 4 question survey of my own and people who wish to take it can. I will publish the answers to the survey once I have 100 responses. There are 4 questions. Each of the 4 questions must be answered for the survey to be collected.
Please be honest and provide complete answers. What I'm hoping to find out is what questions should be placed on a larger survey that is sent out to the entire community. I am also curious to find out if we can depend on the community to be open, honest, and constructive. If we can't, then there is really no reason to expend dollars trying to do a district wide survey. If we can do the survey via Survey Monkey, we could do the survey very inexpensively, so if this can work, we might be able to use it.
Click HERE to take the survey. It is anonymous, so for those of you who are unwilling to provide your name, you are safe.
UPDATE 03/27/11:
So far there have been 27 responses. Many of the thoughts and suggestions are really very good. As I said, once I have one hundred responses, I will publish them all. Thanks to all who have participated so far.
UPDATE 04/05/11:
As of today there have been 50 responses. The responses continue to be thoughtful and the suggestions good. Once there are 100 responses I will publish them all. Thanks to all who have participated.
Here is an interesting commentary on testing programs and how they are impacting the ways in which we educate students.
Testing is something that I have been contemplating for the last 2 years and I'm interested in what people think about the level of testing that we do in our District. I have a 2nd grade daughter who is taking the Curriculum Associates testing this year and I don't think she cares for it much and I don't see any advantage to her taking the test.
Last week I attended an Apple Education conference in San Jose where managers from Apple, teachers and school administrators from all over California got together to talk about programs where entire classes of students have i Pads. The improvements that they are experiencing in student achievement in all sectors, be it English Language Learner, Special Education, Socioeconomic Disadvantaged, Minority, etc. are truly amazing. These programs are all creative thinking based and are not based on rote memorization of test materials. These are programs where students, teachers and administrators think for themselves and apply creative thought to the challenges that they face. They are experiencing fewer behavioral problems, higher attendance rates and increased student achievement, and the changes are significant.
I think testing became popular because politicians found that it resonated with constituents. Politicians stated that they were going to demand better performance from schools and they were going to regularly test students to provide accountability. They were going to hold schools, teachers, administrators and Board Members accountable for student achievement.
So we have tons of testing now, in our district and in districts across the Nation. Is it working? Is this what you want for your students?
In 2009 we attempted a $99 per parcel tax that would have generated $7.5 million in revenue per year. The measure received support from 60% of the voters in the Mt. Diablo Unified School District.
So here we are, closing schools and possibly facing many more cuts if State taxes are not extended in June. Do we wait for the next shoe to drop on our students or should we attempt to pass a parcel tax and help our kids and their schools.
Passing a parcel tax is not easy. It requires a 66.67% approval rate from voters. If we could pass a parcel tax we could stop many of the cuts that our students are facing.
Should we invest in the future of our students?
Given that a $99 parcel tax provides about $7.5 million per year, what level of parcel tax would you support if given the opportunity?
Would you work on the parcel tax campaign?
What should the parcel tax dollars be spent on?
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Once again the Board of Education will get together with members of the School Closure Advisory Committee to discuss school closure options. The meeting will be located at Glenbrook Middle School inside the gymnasium. The address of Glenbrook is 2351 Olivera Rd, Concord. The meeting time is 7:00 PM.
Due to limited connectivity the meeting will not be covered online or on KVHS.
The Board will use this opportunity to meet with the School Closure Advisory Committee to discuss an alternative option that includes the following:
- Close Westwood Elementary and shift most of the students to Mountain View Elementary.
- Re-designate the school currently known as Westwood as the school that would receive all 6th grade students from Glenbrook Middle School and El Dorado Middle School.
- El Dorado Middle School would be the receiving school for most 7th and 8th grade students from Glenbrook Middle School as well as the El Dorado Middle School 7th and 8th grade students.
The Board hopes to discuss the option with Committee Members to get their thoughts on the alternative. With the length of time that the Committee spent discussing school closures, they are uniquely positioned to possibly provide the Board with valuable insights.
Once we have completed our discussions with the School Closure Advisory Committee, the Board will hear testimony from interested members of the community. At a typical meeting the public is provided 3 minutes each to speak. Given the number of people that have been signing up to speak about school closures, speakers should be prepared to provide their thoughts in 1 minute. We have to limit the length of speeches so that we can ensure that we hear from all speakers and still have time to discuss as a Board.
On top of your ability to provide testimony at the meeting, I would encourage interested community members to e-mail Board Members to share your thoughts.
The Board will not make any decisions at the February 15, 2011 meeting. The final decisions are scheduled to made at the Board meeting on February 22, 2011.
If you would like to read the agenda for the meeting on February 15, 2011, please CLICK HERE.
I wanted to post an update that describes where we are at with school closures.
First, the decisions that have been made:
- Sequoia Elementary, Sequoia Middle School and Monte Gardens have been removed from consideration for closure.
- The Glenbrook Middle School will no longer function as a district middle school at the end of the 2010-2011 school year. Currently the receiving schools for Glenbrook students will be El Dorado, Oak Grove, and Valley View.
- The Holbrook Elementary school site will no longer function as a district elementary school at the end of the 2010-2011 school year. Currently the receiving schools for Holbrook students will be Wren and Sun Terrace.
- Schools still under consideration for closure are Silverwood Elementary and Westwood Elementary.
The Board has requested a number of pieces of data from the Superintendent that will allow the Board of Education to determine which of the two schools still under consideration, if any, should be closed.
The rationale for considering Westwood is because the closure of Westwood would allow Glenbrook to be moved as a whole school population to El Dorado and the site currently known as Westwood. This would allow Glenbrook students to remain together instead of being split into three schools. It would also allow the students of Glenbrook to continue to benefit from the $1,100,000 School Improvement Grant that they are now receiving.
The closure of Westwood Elementary would have all students attending Mountain View Elementary, once again keeping an entire school population together.
If we close Silverwood Elementary those students would be split amongst three receiving schools. The three receiving schools for Silverwood students will be Ayers, Mountain View and Highlands.
Sherry and I made the proposal for the Board and Community to consider the option of closing Westwood and allowing the Glenbrook students and El Dorado students to utilize the combined campuses of El Dorado and Westwood. We did so in order to present an alternative to splitting up Glenbrook into three receiving schools and splitting up Silverwood into three pieces. It also allows the students to continue to benefit from the $1.1 million in SIG funding.
The more we look at this plan the more we see that there are modifications that can be made to improve it. For instance, there are a number of students that attend Glenbrook that would actually be closer to Oak Grove Middle School, so maybe we should give those students the option of attending Oak Grove. There are students that are closer to Monte Gardens than they are to Mountain View, so maybe we should give those students the option of attending Monte Gardens. We are continuing to look at the options in front of us as a way to improve the overall plan.
The feed back we hope to get in the next two weeks is whether or not it makes sense to keep the students together at one school or if those communities would rather split into three schools. We need constructive feed back that will help us make the decisions that we must make. If you are going to comment, please provide feedback as to what option makes the most sense and, if you believe our rationale is flawed, where you think the flaw is.
Moving forward, here is the current schedule to get bring this to a conclusion:
February 15th we will be meeting at Glenbrook Middle School. The time of the meeting will be 7:00 PM. At that meeting we hope to spend the majority of our time meeting with members of the school closure committee to see what they think about the new options that we are discussing. The school closure committee has done a ton of studying of all of these issues and are very well positioned to comment and discuss the remaining options. There will be time for public comment, but commenting time will be limited.
February 22nd we will hold a regular Board meeting where, as part of that meeting, we will continue the discussion of options under consideration. There will be time for public comment at that meeting and the Board is scheduled to make a final decision at that meeting. Depending on the number of speakers at that meeting, speakers should be prepared to limit their speeches to 1 minute. Meeting location has not been finalized.
As always, we urge the community to continue to correspond with the Board, sharing concerns and having conversations about the merits of the options before us. We placed the additional option on the agenda for consideration because we were concerned about splitting up students, friends, and families. If the schools being split up tell us that they don't mind being split up, I believe they know what's best for their families much better that we do. I am prepared to chose the option that best serves the students who are impacted.
I also wanted to dispel one myth that is beginning to circulate. Just because we change the school of residence for an elementary or middle school student, doesn't mean that we will change the attendance area for their next higher school. For example, if a Glenbrook student would traditionally attend Mt. Diablo High School, but was sent to a different middle school because Glenbrook was closed, that student would still attend Mt. Diablo High School.
Here's another myth that needs dispelling. There are comments that suggest that closing one school will increase class size maximums at another school. That is not true. Our class size maximums are determined by union contract and state education code. No increases to those maximums is being discussed.
I have received a number of e-mails requesting a time and location for the Board meeting on February 8th. The meeting will be held at Mt. Diablo High School in the gymnasium. The open session portion of the meeting will begin at 7:30 PM. The agenda will be online this evening and can be located HERE once it has been posted. Due to the fact that we are holding the meeting at MDHS, we apparently do not have the ability to provide an audio feed to KVHS, so the meeting will not be on the radio. We do believe that we are capable of providing a video feed, so we are hoping that the meeting will be streamed live over the Internet to this blog site. I will post more once the agenda has been in the community and people are starting to ask questions.postCount('020811');
In the intervening time between the meeting that we held on January 25th and our next meeting on February 8th, we have time to continue to look at the data related to school closure. There is no question that we have to find a way to reduce costs. There is no question that given the fact that we are experiencing significant ongoing reductions in enrollment numbers district wide, we must consolidate the number of schools that we currently operate. The question is, given that communities were designed so that schools would be close the students that they serve, how do we close schools in such a way that we will impact students the least?
As I have said before, I have not made up my mind. I have vacillated between several solutions, none of which is easy. At our last meeting Superintendent Lawrence shared with the Board and audience a solution that closes Glenbrook and a choice between Holbrook Elementary or Wren Elementary. Per his proposed solution, the Superintendent suggests that if we re-purpose the two schools and use them to bring in house some of our alternative programs and special education programs, we can save enough money to avoid having to close a third school. Also included in his solution is a requirement to modify boundaries to relieve overcrowding at several schools, most notably Meadow Homes Elementary and Delta View Elementary. I would expect that the boundaries would have to change soon enough to impact next school year which is going to impact many students.
So what is on the table? What choices can the Board make? The Board can choose any option that has been proposed or an option that hasn't yet been proposed. The Board can look at the data and decide that all options are too difficult for students to deal with, but if that was done, the Board would have to come up with budget reductions to achieve $1.5 million in cuts. We have made so many cuts in our district, I honestly don't know where those additional cuts would come from.
I believe that the Board has a responsibility to act at our February 8th meeting. Board Members have had the data for some time now and we have all had the opportunity to meet with and discuss possibilities with staff members. I have spent hours in those discussions and hours with the data. We have been contemplating school closures for over a year now, so there should be no accusations that the Board and the district have rushed to conclusion. Of all of the reductions that we have made over the years, this is the most thoroughly studied and has had the greatest opportunity for public input. Parents, students and staff members are waiting for the decision to be made so that they can begin to plan for next school year. Extending the date for a decision will be extremely difficult to deal with on many levels.
There has been some questions and criticisms because I requested the Superintendent give his presentation after public comment at our January 25th meeting. I viewed the Superintendent's presentation for the first time at 5:30 PM on January 25th and I don't believe that any other Board Member saw the presentation prior to the meeting. I wanted to give the public an opportunity to speak prior to the Superintendent suggesting a solution. If you will recall, I was criticized for asking that Sequoia Elementary, Sequoia Middle School and Monte Gardens Elementary be removed from consideration for closure at our January 19th school closure meeting prior to public comment. I think that no matter when a solution is suggested, the timing, the committee make up, the rationale that the committee used, the rationale that the Board used, the motivations of everyone, and everything else will be criticized by those who are impacted. I understand it given the importance of the decisions being made as well as the many people who will be impacted. That said, I have seen no evidence that would impeach the data or prove that any member of the committee or member of the Board has any interest other than what's best for all students.
At our January 25th meeting I suggested that we hold the meeting in the Monte Gardens MU room because of the potential that the Board room would be too small to hold the audience. Unfortunately, even MG was too small. I have requested that our February 8th meeting be held in the MU room of one of our high schools to make sure that we have ample room for the audience. We will have a location for that meeting determined at some point this coming week. We are trying to find a high school MU room that is large enough and has connected Internet so that we have the ability to stream the Board meeting live over the Internet.
Watch live streaming video from mdusd at livestream.com
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Given all of the questions and accusations that I have seen swirling around the school closure issue, I wanted to provide the rationale that I applied when asking the Board to consider removing option 3 (Sequoia El, Sequoia MS, and Monte Gardens) from consideration.
The reasons are three and they really paint a clear picture:
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The cost to outfit campuses with additional classrooms that will receive returning students from the three closing schools is estimated to be $3.5 million. It makes no sense to close three schools to save $1.5 million only to spend $3.5 million doing so.
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Due to the fact that we would have to construct about 16 new classrooms to implement this option, we would not be able to implement the scenario on time. The lead time to get the classrooms designed, through the Office of State Architecture, and actually built would preclude implementation by the 2011-2012 school year which fails to meet the objective of saving $1.5 million in the first year of implementation.
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The three schools in option 3 are among the highest performing schools in the District. Actually they are very high performing as compared to all schools in the County or even the State. There is no way that I can rationalize closing our highest performing programs to cut costs.
Given the rationale above, I cannot vote to close these schools. It has nothing to do with favoring certain schools over others. My mind was not made up prior to attending the meeting. I have spent hours wading through all of the data that has been assembled. When you sit with the results of the study that has been done, when you look at the recommendations that the committee made, when you look at the votes that they cast, scenarios 1 and 2 look rational.
If the Board believes that one of the scenarios is unworkable, I believe it is better to speak up and let the community know so that people are not wasting their time advocating for or against a scenario that is not possible to implement. I also think we need to give the Superintendent accurate direction so that he can spend all of his time working on viablesolutions that will help solve thechallenges that we will face rather than wasting his time on scenarios that I thinkwill never come to fruition.
For those of you that were in attendance Wednesday night, you saw the Board ask questions about alternative uses for the schools that may close. The reason for that is to see if we can close fewer schools, reformat the schools that do close to allow other programs to be moved into those sites which may allow us to save more money and allow us to close 2 schools rather than 3. That is another reason that I wanted to remove the scenario that I believe doesn't stand a chance of selection, to provide the Superintendent and his staff the opportunity to spend time focusing on finding solutions that will work.
It's easy to criticize the decisions of the committee. I am willing to bet that most who are criticizing have not looked at the data. I know it is difficult to spend the time reading all of the material, studying it and really thinking about how you would deal with the problem if you were a committee member. I will give one example. I have seen criticism of the selection of Glenbrook rather than Oak Grove. I think both schools could have been put forward. When scored side by side relative to the criteria, the two schools score very close. When you actually study the two options side by side, it becomes very evident that closing Oak Grove would be extremely difficult to do. The middle schools that Oak Grove is closest to are Foothill, Pleasant Hill, and Glenbrook. Those three schools couldn't accept all of the students from Oak Grove without major construction on each of the campuses or we could shift the boundaries of Foothill and Pleasant Hill Middle Schools. The ripple effect of shifting the boundaries of Foothill and Pleasant Hill Middle Schools would be extreme and very difficult to deal with. There is another consideration that is worthwhile to point out. Oak Grove receives QEIA dollars and those dollars depend on Oak Grove staying open. If Oak Grove closes, the QEIA dollars will not follow the students, the dollars will simply disappear from the district. Glenbrook receives SIG dollars and those dollars are not site dependent and will follow the students if the school is closed. So when you actually sit down and look at the materials that we have to study, rational recommendations can and have been made that are based on objective criteria.
Closing any school is devastating. Each of the schools that are being considered is extremely important to the parents, teachers, staff, and most importantly, the students that attend. Each of these schools address the educational needs of their students in different ways in order to meet the specific needs of the students who attend. We shouldn't be in this position, but the State of California and the politicians who rule the State have not made education a priority. When you couple the State's unwillingness to provide adequate funding and the fact that our District, like most districts in the State, is dealing with the affects of declining enrollment, closing schools is an unwelcome necessity.
My goal is to narrow the choices as soon as possible so that the Superintendent has clear direction. Scenario three is not an option and I don't want to spend the valuable time of our staff and, most importantly, our community on scenarios that are not feasible. When I asked the Board if there was consensus around removing scenario 3 from consideration, there was not unanimous support to do so. We have a history in our district of respecting the concerns of each Board Member, so despite the fact that it appeared that there was support to remove the scenario from consideration, I suggested that we not do so on January 19. 2011.
I'd like to make one additional comment and that is about the latest accusation that members of the committee were conflicted in their ability to make fair and balanced decisions based on what's best for all students. I have even seen an accusation that a member of the committee has control over 8 members of the committee. I know a few of the members of the committee because over the years they have served on many committees on behalf of the students of our District. These individuals are above reproach and if they thought for a moment that there were members on the committee who were attempting to serve personal interests, they would have immediately cried foul. It is impossible to assemble a committee which is completely without interests that conflict. Each member comes to the committee with interests, parent, grand parent, business owner, home owner, relative, etc. It's not like people came out of the wood work when the District invited volunteers to meet weekly for hours, to study reams of data, to listen to hours of consultant presentation and instruction, to make extremely important decisions, and now to be criticized irrationally by people who are too busy or uninterested to study the data for themselves. Even after selecting 32 members for the committee, only 24 made it to the end. This was not easy work. So when criticizing the work of the committee or the make up of the committee, please start your comment with a recitation or the data that supports your belief that a bad recommendation was reached.
To review the materials that the school closure advisory committee have reviewed and created, click HERE.
To view the power point presentation from January 19, 2011, click HERE
The Board of Education will discuss this topic at our January 25, 2011 Board meeting and we should be in a position to make a final decision at our February 8, 2011 Board meeting. Public comment will be accepted at both Board meetings.
January 24, 2011 Update:
After a lengthy meeting this evening trying to gain a better understanding of some of the site budgets that we are dealing with, I want to correct a partial factual error that I made. The error relates to QEIA and SIP funding at Oak Grove and Glenbrook. I was correct when I stated that QEIA funding would not follow students if Oak Grove were closed. I can also take it one step farther and report that if students are moved into Oak Grove, the QEIA funding would increase on a per pupil basis. The partial error that I made relates to the SIP funding that Glenbrook receives. There are two pots of SIP dollars; the first are the district SIP dollars and there are also SIP site dollars. If Glenbrook is closed and the students go to other schools, the district will continue to receive district SIP dollars but will cease to receive the SIP site dollars if the school is closed. What does hold true is that if Oak Grove were closed we would lose many more dollars than if Glenbrook were closed. This is just one more indication that the ways that school districts are funded are extremely complex and difficult to manage. I do want to ensure that I am providing accurate information.
The Board of Education and the School Closure Advisory Committee will conduct a joint meeting to discuss school closures. The meeting will take place on January 19, 2011 at 5:30 PM at Northgate High School in the Little Theater. We will also attempt to stream the meeting live to this blog so that those who are unable to attend will have an opportunity to watch.
At the meeting we will have an opportunity to understand the reasons why certain sites and options were chosen and why others were not. We will see a presentation of Committee vote counts and how schools were ranked relative to the criteria. Thirty minutes has been set aside at the end of the meeting for public comment. There will be no decision made at the meeting on January 19, 2011.
The Board will officially receive the recommendations of the School Closure Advisory Committee at the School Board meeting on January 25, 2011 where the item will be placed on the agenda as an information item. A thirty minute public comment period will be available for speakers who wish to address the Board relative to the recommendations of the School Closure Advisory Committee. The Board will make no decisions at the meeting on January 25, 2011, this is only an information item and an opportunity for public comment. Typically speakers are allowed three minutes each to speak, but if there are more than ten speakers, the thirty minute comment period will be divided by the number of speakers wanting to address the Board, so speakers should be prepared to truncate their presentations.
The final decision will be made at the February 8, 2011 meeting of the Board of Education. This is where the final recommendation will be presented as an action item for the Board to discuss and act upon. Once again there will be a thirty minute public comment period to allow speakers to address the Board.
The process will not end with our final decision on which schools will be closed. Once that decision is made, attendance areas will have to be drawn and decisions about where students attend school will have to be made.
Along with coming to Board meetings to provide public comment, you can also e-mail and phone Board Members directly and voice concerns and make suggestions. All Board contact information can be found on the school district's web site.
The process for determining which schools will be closed in the Mt. Diablo Unified School District as a result of budget cuts and declining enrollment is coming to a close. At this point the Board is working on finding a suitable date in January to hold a joint meeting between the Board of Education and the School Closure Advisory Committee. Once we have a firm date, we will announce the date, time, and location of the meeting. This joint meeting will provide an opportunity for the Committee to share with the Board their recommendation for school closures, and will allow the Board to ask questions regarding the schools chosen and the schools not recommended. The School Closure Advisory Committee has undertaken an extensive process for selecting schools and it will be important for the Board to completely understand the rationale for their choices.
Despite the fact that this is an extremely important decision that will impact many students and families in our district, I have withheld comment on the issue because I believe that it is incumbent upon the Board to allow the Committee to work through their process without interference from the Board. We have chosen a process and we must have faith in that process. I have read with great interest many of the comments on other blog sites. The one comment that I will make is that I don't understand the criticism of the Committee for exploring all options available. I would think that the community would want the Committee to explore all options and then make a decision based on all of the facts.
I have faith in the process and in the volunteer Members of the Committee to make thoughtful decisions that are in the best interest of all students. I also have faith that the Board will undertake a thoughtful, public process that will culminate in a final decision.
I welcome comments on the topic, however I will not likely post baseless accusations that don't further the discussion. This is an extremely important topic, way too important for me to condone comments that are venomous and false.
I am also including a link here to get to the District's web site where the minutes and other information are contained for the School Closure Advisory Committee. If you want to truly understand where the process is and how it arrived here, I would recommend spending a little time and really reviewing the information. I think if you do you will have a good understanding and will be much less likely to believe the rumor and innuendo that is following this issue.