At last night’s Board meeting Carrie Du Bois was finally released from her sentence of being Board President. Actually, Carrie did a great job as President in the last year, and we all chose to recognize that by giving her and Grant a gift certificate to the Avenir restaurant group (think Town, Milagro’s, etc). But it’s true she had a very challenging year as chair, what with all the challenges the District faced (and is continuing to face).
As is traditional, my colleagues elected me to serve as Board President for the next year. For which I thank them. I think :). Because, you know, those challenges haven’t gone away…
In any event, in the role as chair, I’ve promised myself I’m going to do more regular postings to this blog about the Board and the District. This is the first such. As always, while I’ll try to convey the overall sense of what’s happening, none of this is official, in either a District or a Board sense.
Last night we continued to discuss the enrollment/capacity/boundary proposal. We also talked about the potential for the District launching a pre-school program, and the District’s current financial situation.
On the boundary front, Craig presented the results of his on-going meetings and research into fine-tuning the proposal staff presented a few weeks ago. The tweaks that staff is considering since the initial release of the proposal mostly involve factoring more traffic flow considerations in the twisty canyon and hillside areas of the region that are being proposed for transfer from Arundel to Heather. As with any boundary change, there are a large number of factors to balance. But it’s important to remember what the primary goal is of this effort: better, and more balanced, utilization of capacity at each of our four elementary schools. That’s been the Board’s main goal all along.
I expect staff to continue to fine-tune the proposal before it comes back for final presentation and action in late January. One situation that may change involves where the two communities (separated by Holly Street) on the east side of San Carlos get assigned . The current proposal calls for both of them to be moved from Brittan Acres to Arundel. One suggestion from a community member last night involved shifting one or both of those areas to Heather, so as to minimize the number of people coming out of Arundel seeking to turn left onto San Carlos Avenue. I can think of a number of reasons not to do make such a tweak, but if it does a better job of addressing traffic flow during drop-off and pick-up times it’s worth evaluating.
Having the District establish and run a pre-school program is an exciting idea, for many reasons. Chief among those are the potential for improving educational outcomes — much research shows that a strong pre-school program benefits many children — and the possibility of creating a revenue stream that could be used to offset, at least partially, the deficit in the K-8 program caused by the dismal State funding situation. Several trustees, myself included, expressed the view that initiating a pre-school program would be worth doing even if it was only cashflow-neutral on the rest of the District’s operations. I asked staff to research, carefully, the ramifications of a public entity — the District — effectively going into competition with private pre-school providers (I believe there are rules and restrictions that govern such interactions). But, all in all, definitely an idea worth pursuing, and one that might — emphasis on the “might” — help deal with our current financial crisis.
Which was the subject of the third major topic last night, the first interim financial report. Twice a year districts have to demonstrate, through financial projections, that they are solvent financially and, if not, explain how they’re going to become so.
I hope this next does not come as a surprise to anyone, but the fact of the matter is that the District is currently not viable financially over the long term. Staff projections show that, even if Measure D, the June 2003 parcel tax, is renewed, the District will end the 2011/12 school year with reserves barely above the statutory minimum (4+% versus the required 3%). And that’s after making some significant cuts to District programs. Without a Measure D renewal the situation is even bleaker, with reserves at the end of the 2011/12 school year dropping to less than 1%, well below the statutory minimum.
There are several important takeaways here. First and foremost, we must prepare to take action to improve our financial situation. Ideally that gets done through increasing revenue, but we also need to develop plans for reducing costs. Which means, we need to decide which valued programs are curtailed or terminated so that we can preserve as much of the educational experience we want to give our kids as we can. Following immediately from this first goal is a narrower one: we must get Measure D re-approved. As difficult as the situation is with Measure D renewed, it is far worse if it isn’t. We also need to support the Ed Foundation’s efforts to raise as much money philanthropically as we can.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of achieving these goals, particularly through increasing the District’s revenues. But I also want to urge people not to get too dogmatic about the inevitable budget cut discussions.
It would be wonderful if we can restructure the District’s finances without having to make any more cuts than we already have (remember, the Board voted to eliminate four District office positions at our last meeting). But, personally, I think the odds are against our being able to do that. We need to pursue additional sources of revenue…but at the same time we need to make plans to reduce costs in case the new revenues don’t materialize, or don’t materialize in time, or are insufficient. We sure can’t count on Sacramento to increase funding! In fact, they are much more likely to reduce their support even further.
At least one of my colleagues, Carrie, appears to like the idea of putting certain programs “off limits”, never to be touched regardless of how bad things get. I understand the motivation behind that approach to budgeting, but I don’t believe in it myself. It’s too easy to put too many things on the “do not touch” list, at which point you can’t put a budget together without breaking your pledge not to touch the untouchable programs.
My own philosophy is both simpler (a good thing) and less predictive (a bad thing, because no one likes uncertainty) as to what is going to come out of the budgeting process.
I believe the Board’s duty, acting on behalf of our community, is to provide the children of San Carlos with the best education we can afford to give them. When more resources can be found, we enrich the experience (and consider putting some money aside for the kind of rainy day we’re currently going through). When fewer resources can be found, we trim the experience. But in all situations we do the best we can.
And we do it in an open and transparent way so that the community can hold us accountable to that standard of always doing our best.
An early step in that kind of process is to hold public hearings at which priorities can be discussed and community members can weigh in with their own views. Carrie asked that we do that in January, which I completely support doing. So keep an eye on the Board agendas for early next year, and plan on coming to some important meetings!