UPPER LAKE, Calif. – A month after it agreed to cut some administrative and teaching positions within the district, the Upper Lake Union Elementary School District Board of Trustees on Wednesday night approved the second phase of an aggressive budget reduction plan that calls for restructuring and cutting classified staff.
District Superintendent Valerie Gardner took the proposal to the board as followup to the first phase, which was approved Feb. 20.
The first phase of cuts included laying off the middle school principal and cutting the special education director position, with Gardner taking over the latter job. On Wednesday the district board also took the second and final vote to make those cuts.
The classified reductions will include a reduction in custodial staff, eliminating a full-time district secretary, half-time special education secretary and part-time cook, and the creation of a full-time administrative assistant to help Gardner with the added jobs she has taken on.
Other restructuring includes changing 11 instructional aid positions to six special education aids and eliminating a media aid, Gardner said.
At the same time as the district makes cuts, it also has to improve student performance at Upper Lake Elementary School, which is in Performance Improvement status, Gardner said.
Efforts to improve the student performance and attendance include implementing all-day kindergarten in the new school year, ability grouping in English language instruction in kindergarten through fifth grades, staff development focused on teaching strategies and Common Core States Standards, and an increase in instructional minutes for kindergarten through fifth grades, according to Gardner.
Classified cuts will total approximately $209,283, plus $34,900 in certificated reductions, for a total of $244,183, Gardner said.
After additional staff members are hired to help bring the teacher to student ratio in kindergarten and first grades to 20 to 1, there will be a net savings of $123,796, she explained.
“I don't know where else we can cut at this point,” said Gardner.
Before voting on the reductions, the board received a report from district business manager Becky Jeffries on the district’s 2012-13 Second Interim Budget Revision Report.
Jeffries gave a thorough report on the district’s finances and reserves, the latter only about 4 percent when she said an elementary district should have a double-digit reserve to be prepared for emergencies.
The district, Jeffries explained, was in deficit spending. Revenues for this year are projected at $2.9 million, with expenses just over $3 million, putting them $132,992 in the red.
In order to meet their reserve obligations they’ve had to tap into lottery money for the short-term, she said.
The projections for the current academic year as well as the two to come included the staffing reductions being proposed, said Jeffries, as well as a $22,000 cut in funding due to federal sequestration.
By implementing the reductions and restructuring, Jeffries estimated that in 2013-14 the district would have a net increase of $55,089 and $11,426 the following year. The 2014-15 increase would be less, she said, because it’s unclear if federal legislation that gives schools money from timber receipts will be renewed.
The district also has $300,000 in early retirement offers, or “golden handshakes,” for certificated staff that it is paying off. Jeffries said the district has to pay interest on those obligations when they’re not paid off immediately.
This month the district has to make a $200,000 loan between its different funds in order to meet its obligations, and will have to loan itself $100,000 in May, Jeffries said.
She said that 37 percent of the district’s apportionment payments will be made in the coming year. Jeffries said the state is holding onto about $800,000 of the money due the district.
Based on the proposed cuts included in the report, Jeffries said they were giving the second interim budget revision a positive certification, meaning the district was meeting its obligations for the current school year and the next two.
Board member Ron Raetz asked how long the district had been in deficit spending. Gardner said the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, which helps state schools address fiscal problems, had told the district they had been deficit spending for five years.
Board member Marilyn Pivniska pointed out that the positive certification was better than the qualified certification for its finances the district had been facing in December.
Raetz moved to approve the second interim report, with the motion receiving a 5-0 vote.
He also moved to approve the resolution reducing the classified positions and received unanimous approval.
Raetz said that because the district had been deficit spending for so long, rather than making cuts along the way, it was now having to make many cuts all at once.
“It’s not pleasant but it has to be done,” he said.
Pivniska agreed. “It’s really hard to vote on this resolution, especially because we’ve heard all your concerns, we really have,” she told the group of parents and classified staff present for the meeting.
Because the board hadn’t been on top of things and hadn’t held its previous administrators accountable as they should have, “Right now, we don’t have a choice,” Pivniska said, adding that it’s a decision the board didn’t take lightly.
“It seems with past personnel there should have been some checks and balances and more transparency in place” so the board could have known what was going on before, said Board Chair Joanne Breton.
“There was a lot we didn’t know,” Breton said, adding that the golden handshakes they had previously approved had projected savings.
A woman in the audience said the board hadn’t listened to anyone but the past superintendent – a reference to Kurt Herndon, who retired last year. “Yes, you guys are to blame for a lot of it,” the woman said of the district’s financial condition.
As the district tries to improve its finance, community members are pressing the board to give up health insurance benefits, an issue raised during public comment at the Wednesday board meeting.
Dawn Binns, a district classified employee facing the loss of her job, asked board members to give up the insurance benefits.
“As a community member I ask that you be a role model and take the cut with the rest of us,” she said.
Walt Christensen, a former board member of 10 years, spoke on behalf of the board keeping their benefits, with the exception of the member who ran against him on a platform of not accepting them. That was an apparent reference to Raetz, first elected to the board in November 2011.
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