UPPER LAKE, Calif. – Faced with deficit spending and continuing Program Improvement status requirements, the Upper Lake Union Elementary School District Board on Wednesday night voted to make several staff cuts, including eliminating the Upper Lake Middle School principal's job.
Board members Joanne Breton, Mel O'Meara, Ron Raetz and Marilyn Pivniska listened to new district Superintendent Valerie Gardner's proposals, which included eliminating the middle school principal's job, a new business manager and a vacant staff position, and laying off a teacher who taught art to kindergarteners through eighth graders. Board member Don Meri was absent from the meeting.
Ultimately, the four board members approved Gardner's proposals, set to save approximately $74,198 annually across the district, which includes both Upper Lake Elementary, which is in Program Improvement status, and Upper Lake Middle School.
The board's decision meant that Tony Loumena, the middle school principal, will be laid off at year's end. The job cut was attributed to the need to save money, not school performance, which Loumena was credited with improving.
Gardner, who also is principal of Upper Lake Elementary, will take on additional duties to help cover the cuts, including absorbing Loumena's job and also taking on the special education director position, which she said is a job also held by other superintendents among the Northshore's small school districts.
While those cuts will move the schools in the right direction, Gardner told Lake County News following the meeting that phase two of her budget and restructuring plan is still to be presented, and its proposed cuts will be much larger.
On March 20 she will take to the board the second half of her proposal, focusing on cuts to classified staff, with Gardner explaining that she's trying to find another $200,000 in cuts to get the district out of deficit spending and help it meet performance standards.
Part of the plan includes hiring two new teachers to reduce class sizes to a ratio of one teacher to 20 students, she said.
Gardner, who took over as district superintendent last summer. emphasized to the board on Wednesday night that action needed to be taken quickly.
More than two dozen people came to the meeting to hear the proposals.
During public comment, middle school teacher Valerie Duncan, a 31-year veteran of the district, told the board that they were role models, and as a North Shore Teachers Association member she challenged board members to give up their health insurance, which would save an estimated $60,000 annually.
Later, she took another turn during public comment – this time wearing her teacher's hat – to point out how hard Upper Lake Middle School had worked to improve its test scores, only to face the loss of its principal, Loumena, whose leadership she credited with helping to bring about those improvements.
“We feel at the middle school that we are being punished,” she said, adding that she believed some of the decisions before the board that night were not in the best interest of students.
Classified employee Kelly Burns, who has worked at the middle school for 16 years, said she and her husband selected Upper Lake as the place where they wanted to live and raise their child based on the school.
She asked the board to think carefully about where to make the cuts. “It doesn't all rest on the shoulders of the classified.”
Deficit spending expected to increase
Gardner and district business manager Becky Jeffries laid out the restructuring and budget plan for the board and audience.
“This is the result of a very, very in-depth look at our finances and the situation that we're in,” said Gardner.
She said the district had several key issues to address. While fiscal solvency was “huge,” also critically important are enrollment, attendance, student achievement and Program Improvement status.
There also are the new Common Core State Standards – set to go into effect in the 2014-15 school year nationwide, with the exception of Alaska and Texas – which will put more emphasis on technology and thoroughly understanding subjects.
“We need to be putting money and time around how we're going to be doing that,” Gardner said of implementing the new requirements.
Jeffries explained that the district is in deficit spending, although the amounts were not available. Deficits of nearly $176,000 in 2013-14 and $90,000 for 2014-15 are anticipated.
She said the district is “robbing Peter to pay Paul to make ends meet,” with the district eating into its reserves and doing interfund borrowing, which must be paid back. The district also is anticipated to show negative cash balances this March through May, which will require more borrowing.
Gardner said the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, formed to help California school districts, has given the district assistance with its budget.
She said the team told district officials that had Proposition 30 not passed last fall, the district – which has annual revenues of about $3 million, with expenditures coming close to the same amount – would have had a deficit of $600,000.
“'You would be done,'” she recalled a Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team member telling her.
Compounding the district's fiscal crunch is a trend of declining enrollment, challenges relating to school attendance and student achievement, with more than half of the district's children performing below grade level, she said.
That's led Gardner to repeat a key phrase in explaining the need for new approaches: “If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten.”
A new approach is critical, she said, because the district is in year three of its Program Improvement requirements.
One action the board took to address student attendance was to approve Gardner's proposal for implementing extended day kindergarten, as some children were missing up to a third of the school year due to transportation challenges for their family. When those children entered first grade, they tended to have problems with preparedness.
Raetz told the audience Wednesday night that the board has been faced with a number of challenges, and a lack of rules and policies. “This board has worked really hard for you guys.”
After meeting with the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team and finding out the dire consequences for not successfully passing out of Program Improvement – including having the school turned into a charter school and having the staff and teachers fired – he said he was terrified.
Holding up a fiscal plan the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team had given them, which had contributed to the actions the board had taken, Raetz said, “This is what you have to do.”
He added, “We're going to keep this school running and we're going to get our test scores up.”
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