The meeting – the open portion of which lasted about a half-hour – featured a discussion about a deficit recovery plan.
District officials said the plan is necessary due primarily to a structural deficit and other needs the district must meet.
Chief Business Official Joseph Silveira explained that at the board’s Feb. 11 meeting it received a letter from the Lake County Office of Education regarding the 2020-21 First Interim Budget Report.
The district has to certify that it can meet its financial obligations for the remainder of the current fiscal year and the next two.
Lake County Superintendent of Schools Brock Falkenberg said in his letter that the report showed a structural deficit regarding Lakeport Unified’s ability to meet its financial obligations in 2022-23, which puts it in “qualified status.”
Falkenberg’s letter identifies an ongoing decline in enrollment as an impact on district revenue.
Lakeport Unified Superintendent Jill Falconer’s letter in response to Falkenberg on March 1 said the district needed to reduce expenditures by $668,000 to address the structural deficit, costs to negotiate and two additional teachers.
Silveira said the measures proposed to the school board were meant to get the district out of qualified status by its next budget report.
He went over the deficit recovery plan with the board. The plan, which can be seen below, identifies a structural deficit of $304,000 and $208,000 needed for negotiations.
Proposed additions include two teacher jobs, both at Terrace Middle School, along with a Clear Lake High School counselor – a position that was hired with COVID-19 money to help students adjust and which Falconer said they want to keep on permanently – and three half-time intervention paraeducators, one each for the elementary, middle and high schools.
Proposed reductions include a full-time guidance assistant, one teacher at Clear Lake High, two teachers at the elementary school and one at the middle school, a part-time middle school cafeteria worker and six part-time campus supervisors, two at each of the schools.
Funding changes outlined on the plan include moving several positions in the budget, which will result in no change in cost. In one position, where an elementary school technology staffer is leaving and being replaced by a new person, the savings is $15,000.
Silveira said the changes were to address the current budget, not the situation in 2022-23, when the district could “fall off a cliff” due to reduced student numbers.
If enrollment numbers improve, “we don’t fall off a cliff,” Falconer was quick to point out.
Falconer told the board that the teacher positions being reduced are at schools where enrollment is down.
“This is a very strange year,” she said, explaining that they can’t predict enrollment.
“It’s much better to be understaffed than to be overstaffed,” she added.
Board Chair Dan Buffalo asked about whether the district was planning layoff notices. Falconer said there is the potential for one for a teacher. The district hasn’t yet brought forward potential classified employee layoffs as they don’t have to be laid off by March 15 as teachers do, she said.
There was no public comment on the plan and the board approved it unanimously.
The school board also unanimously approved a resolution regarding the reduction or continuance of particular kinds of services in order to lay off the equivalent of one full-time teaching position, cutting 21st century life skills, current events, earth science and computer skills, and two periods of physical education.
Also on the agenda was an update to the classified substitute salary schedule, needed due to the minimum wage increase, which the board approved along with an application to the US Department of Agriculture’s Community Facilities Grant Program in support of the new Clear Lake High School agriculture class.
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Lakeport Unified School District Deficit Recovery Plan by LakeCoNews on Scribd