ESTA UPDATE
Don McKell, President Ralph Giannini, Vice Pres Jane Voss, Secretary Allan Roberts, Treasurer
EstaPres@pacbell.net fax: (408) 272-7569 voice: (408) 272-0601 website: www.EastSideTA.org
There are 32 different CTA Chapters in the
Berryessa Union SD: Francine Davis, Rudy Nassol
Evergreen SD: YES on Measure N
Palo Alto Unified SD: YES on Measure I
DEALING WITH THE UNTHINKABLE
Around 85% of the funds expended by this school district go to salaries and benefits for employees (certificated, classified, confidential, and administra-tive). Whatever remains is largely spent on services and supplies: things. Included in that latter category are the huge costs of utilities (electricity, gas, water), plus textbooks and other instructional materials, custodial supplies, and so forth.
Superintendent Zendejas has stated that if the Parcel Tax issue (Measure K) were to fail to win voter approval on Nov 2, she will move to create a budget for next year that is some $10,000,000 leaner than the budget adopted for the current year. She has also stated that even if the voters approve the parcel tax, next year’s budget will be reduced over this year’s by $4,000,000. Those are bleak numbers indeed.
Not only do they foretell potential difficulties in reaching accord in upcoming bargaining talks over a wide range of “money items”, but there seems little hope that this school district can trim much more fat from the muscle without hitting vital organs.
Additional savings of between four and ten million dollars can probably only be accomplished through the reduction in the number of people receiving paychecks. In very round numbers, when one factors in salary and benefits, an “average teacher” in this district costs around $80,000 per year. An “average administrator” probably costs well over $100,000, and an “average classified” employee is probably much less. An average superintendent runs around $225,000. In any plan to reduce costs significantly, ESTA is likely to bear the brunt of the cuts, if for no other reason than we outnumber all other employee groups combined.
So, how will decisions be made about manpower cuts? In a nutshell, that will be the school board’s decision. However, a (theoretically) hands-off school board such as ours pretends to be is most likely to defer all recommendations of this sort to the superintendent and her cabinet. We got a preview of that thinking last year, when librarians and career center technicians came perilously close to the chopping block. If the parcel tax fails, I think we can predict a repetition of sorts next March, but with less happy results. Also, if the district keeps to its “far from the classroom” mantra, it would not surprise me to see athletics programs, advisors, and counseling take a hit.
It’s not going to be pretty, and there is absolutely no guarantee that classroom teachers will escape unharmed. How does one protect against being laid off? The easiest answer is to make oneself attractive: finish that credential, get that CLAD, learn effective classroom management techniques.
Layoffs in school districts, when they occur, are typically carried out with an eye on employee seniority. All things being equal, the longer you’ve been here, the more likely you are to survive a layoff. But not always. Some districts have made possession of a CLAD or a clear credential one of the components of layoff survival, and under some circumstances these factors might trump seniority.
CHANGE IN METHOD OF COACHING
VACANCIES ANNOUNCEMENTS
I was pleasantly surprised to see a district-wide email the other day that advised all recipients of an assortment of vacancies in District athletic coaching positions. The email originated in the Human Relations department at the DO. In the past few months, ESTA has had several discussions with the new Chief Human Relations Officer Bob Nunez about the lack of consistency in making all employees aware of site coaching openings around the District. Coaching positions are frequently filled with personnel from the same site, but this is not always the case. We applaud this first attempt at trying to make certain that as wide an audience as possible learns of such opportunities.
MORE BLEAK NEWS
ESTA’s Vice President Ralph Giannini and I were summoned to the superintendent’s office on Wednesday morning of last week for a meeting with Dr. Zendejas and Jack Mahrt, the new Chief Financial Officer. The news dispensed by the superintendent was not good.
For reasons not fully explained, the District recently requested that FCMAT, the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team, audit certain portions of the District finances. The report that Giannini and I heard from Dr. Zendejas dealt with the FCMAT auditor’s assertion that significant errors had been committed in two areas of district finance over the past several years.
First: The District
has sold two parcels of land in the past couple of years. One of these parcels was a 2 acre piece of
the property upon which the District Office sits, which was sold to the Valley
Transit Authority for use as a parking facility in the new light rail line on
Second: Pursuant to state law, as new housing is built in a school district, a certain portion of the value of the dwellings must be provided to the school district by the builders, as a means of softening the impact that the new families in the homes may have on schools. These funds are generally called “developers fees”, and the range of items upon which these collected fees can be spent by the school district is governed under law. The FCMAT auditor has stated that the transfer of funds out of developers fees into a deferred maintenance account is an illegal practice. At this time, no one is quite sure what the statute of limitations might be on the developers fees transfers, but it could be as much as five years. One estimate is that these transfers could have been as much as $4 million in that space of time.
If the FCMAT auditor is correct about both of these findings, the District may have to restore as much as $8.3 million to the affected funds. Just about the only source from which to make any required restoration will be the General Fund, and reducing that fund by many millions of dollars will have a profound impact on all District programs. By law, in a district our size the ending balance plus reserve of the General Fund is not allowed to drop to a level that is below 3% of the projected expenditures. The budget recommended by the superintendent and adopted by our school board for the current fiscal year was already precariously close to the 3% margin.
The FCMAT auditor’s findings could tip the balance.
Among other things, salaries and benefits of most non-Special Education employees in the District come out of the General Fund. To the extent that categorical money doesn’t cover the cost of certain high-cost programs, such as Special Education, it will be the General Fund that will be tapped to make up the difference.
If the transfer of an additional unbudgeted eight or more million dollars out of the General Fund is deemed to be mandatory during the current fiscal year, the District’s reaction will likely make the cuts we’ve seen in the past two years seem insignificant by comparison.
Although FCMAT auditors are well versed in school finance,
there is always the chance that their findings may err on the side of being
conservative. The land upon which the
District Office sits was purchased in 1965, and the Quimby property where
Several components of the FCMAT auditor’s report are unusual, and bring a series of questions to mind. First, why were they here at all? Who asked them to come, and for what? Second, it is a fact that by state law the District’s books are audited by a supposedly competent CPA once a year. If some illegal practice has indeed been occurring with respect to transfers between funds for many years, why has not the annual audit picked this up? Third, in addition to the required annual audits, our District has contracted at great expense on several occasions in the recent past to bring in additional auditing firms (KPMG, Harvey Rose) to examine the books in a variety of areas. One might ask how such illegal fund transfer practices have gone unnoticed by even these professionals.
Coincidences fascinate me, and I am frequently suspicious of them. Is the presence of the FCMAT auditor connected in any way to the election of school board trustees? or to the parcel tax measure? Who benefits from all of this?
Is it just a coincidence that ESTA’s contract with the District will be up for renegotiation next spring? Certainly one technique used by other agencies in the past to negotiate drastic changes in contracts has been for one side to try to convince the other that the sky was falling.
If the sky really is falling, it is not foolish or imprudent to take steps to reach an accommodation with the District that may ward off draconian cuts in salary, benefits, and acute degradations in working conditions, not only for ourselves but also our coworkers in the classified, administrative, and confidential ranks. If pain must be meted out, ESTA should be ready to step up and take our fair share. But we have all been witness in the recent past to a certain “ready, fire, aim” approach in management’s approach to problem solving, and so I think it only natural that we remain skeptical until we have convincing evidence.
Superintendent Zendejas has announced a series of meetings in which frank and open discussions of district finances will be held. Indeed, at least one such meeting has already been held. While it is regrettable that we are only now beginning a process that should have begun already, at least we have finally started.
It seems to me that even now, more and more work is being expected from fewer and fewer people, and I must wonder how much longer our system can contract upon itself before we reach a point of implosion.