District to investigate school closures – and new parcel tax
Tuesday night's Board of Ed meeting.
Alameda’s Board of Education has directed Superintendent Kirsten Vital to begin planning for the potential closure of one or more schools at the end of the 2010-2011 school year – and to look into putting another parcel tax on the ballot in the spring of 2011 that could help stave off the closures and other future cuts.
“The fact of the matter is, it’s very clear this community wants to continue to support these schools. I’ll go down on that sword, because this is what I want to continue to fight for,” board Vice President Mike McMahon said Tuesday night after asking the rest of his dais-mates to direct Vital and her staff to look at putting a tax on the ballot in March 2011.
McMahon said he thinks the board owes it to the community to ensure it has exhausted every option before closing schools. A proposed closure plan could be available for board and public input by September.
“The integrity of this community is based on our ability to walk our kids to school. Not ship them to factories,” McMahon said.
McMahon said that school district officials and school board members could make few promises about how the money generated by a new parcel tax would be spent because state funding – which accounts for the bulk of the district’s budget – is so unstable. He said that when the board put the Measure H tax on the ballot in 2008, he had no idea the state would take so much more money away from schools than it already had.
Trustee Tracy Jensen said that the board will have to consider the district’s mission needs to be as it decides what to cut.
“What is our mission? Is it K-12? Is it preschool? Is it adult school? I think we’re going to have to make some tough choices,” Jensen said.
Earlier in the evening, several parents asked the board to consider putting another tax on the ballot. Sarah Olaes, the volunteer coordinator for APLUS, which ran the campaign for the Measure E tax, said she and others are ready to work toward getting a new parcel tax passed. Some 65.6 percent of voters who participated in the Measure E election voted in favor of it, but it needed the approval of two-thirds of voters to pass.
“If Superintendent Vital and the board are ready to put another measure on the ballot, we’re ready. We will work again,” Olaes said to cheers from the dozens of people who attended Tuesday’s board meeting.
Trustee Trish Hererra Spencer, who had opposed Measure E, voted with the rest of the board to direct Vital to look into putting a new tax on the ballot. Some parents who attended Tuesday’s meeting expressed anger over Spencer’s opposition to putting Measure E on the ballot. Spencer had argued the ballot measure didn’t offer enough specifics about how the money would be spent and she questioned the tax’s split roll structure.
“While most of the board members supported (Measure E) and even worked on the campaign, one board member used this as a platform to create a more divisive community. I find it repugnant and offensive that Ms. Spencer voted against (putting the tax on the ballot), and that board member Spencer actively campaigned against Measure E,” said Christine Strena, president of the Parent Teacher Association Council and development director for the Alameda Education Foundation.
“The only alternative solution Ms. Spencer has provided is to close the neighborhood schools the community has stated time and time again are important,” Strena said. “Closing Edison, Franklin and Paden will not net $7 million.”
Spencer has advocated for the closure of some of the district’s smallest schools. On Tuesday she asked the board to consider directing Vital to look into direct solicitation of funding. She did not address the comments made by Strena and others regarding her position on Measure E.
Parents also took Spencer to task for an e-mail she sent to a teacher at Encinal urging the school’s supporters to attend Tuesday’s meeting to advocate for the school because she believed the board would be voting to close Encinal and Wood. The board voted to being the closure planning process, but specific schools slated for closure have not yet been named.
“Even though we’re only approving the budget, I think we’re really approving closing Encinal and Wood,” Spencer wrote to the teacher, who forwarded the e-mail to other teachers and administrators at Encinal. “Maybe I’m wrong, I haven’t been able to get clarification that’s satisfactory, so I’m planning to ask questions about this at tomorrow’s Board meeting. But it probably makes sense that anyone that wants to protect Encinal high show up at tomorrow’s Board meeting and address the Board with their concerns.”
Spencer’s daughter, Elaine, who attends Encinal, asked the board to keep Encinal open and suggested they consider closing Alameda High School instead. She also asked the board to keep ninth graders in high school, instead of shifting grade configurations to move them into middle school.
McMahon and board President Ron Mooney said they’d be interested in looking into a bond measure to create a single high school for Alameda, which one parent suggested the board consider. McMahon said he’d also be willing to consider consolidating elementary school students into new, larger schools like Bay Farm and Amelia Earhart, while Mooney said district staff should take a look at the facilities and land the district has available.
Meanwhile, the board approved a budget for next year that contains $7 million worth of previously approved cuts. Class sizes in kindergarten through third grade and ninth grade will grow to 25 students per teacher and 35 students per teacher, respectively, and school will end a week earlier than usual.
Vital walked attendees at Tuesday’s meeting through the rest of the cuts for next year, which include a reduction in middle school and high school counselors and funding for textbooks, maintenance and adult education. Advanced placement classes could also be cut if they don’t have the maximum number of students in them, she said.
The budget also included lists of potential cuts for the following two school years. The district is required to show it can balance its budget for three years, even if district officials don’t know how much money they will have to pay for services.
Under current conditions, district staff showed they would need to cut Alameda Unified’s budget by an additional $4.2 million in 2011-2012 and $11.4 million in 2012-2013, when the district’s existing parcel taxes sunset (the latter amount includes $3.6 million in cuts from the previous year). Measures A and H generate $7.3 million a year for the district. Measure E would have garnered $14 million a year for eight years.
Potential cuts for those years could include the closure of a high school, a middle school and four elementary schools; elimination of some elementary level media center, music and physical education teachers; salary rollbacks; additional teacher furlough days; and elementary school class size increases to 32 students per teacher.
Mike, I would support a flat rate tax, with no cap, structured at an x cents per square foot that would have the smallest dwelling in Alameda paying the same rate now garnered by Measures A & H combined, $309 per year, but not beginning until they expire at the end of school year 2011-2012. Until then, let the district, as I said to Vital, “Live within its means.” The discipline would do it/her/them good. Moreover, I would not support a parcel tax running for eight years, but only four, which would take us up to 2016.
Such taxes are an obvious skirting of Prop. 13, and as such should be severely limited. Hence, the 2/3 majority of those registered voters moved or civic enough to vote. Also, their duration should be limited as circumstances, state funding, etc. change. State legislators are considering a measure which would lower the threshold for parcel taxes to 55 percent of the vote for passage, but as a compromise would also cap any new parcel taxes at $150. This may have influenced Vital’s timing. And the March date as well. There is another measure under consideration in Sacramento that would keep the 2/3 rule and extend it to all fiscal proposals at the state or local level.
If a flat tax were too high it would still injure many businesses and put some out of business. AUSD is NOT going out of business, although it is so poorly managed there is talk of taking the entire district Charter. Analysis shows that is fiscally feasible,as Michele once discovered. Any private sector business performing as poorly as AUSD would either go bankrupt or be radically made over.
Finally, the whole issue of enrollment decline is controversial. The closing of the Naval Air Station in 1996(?) took some 900 students out of the system. Keeping small schools open and reducing class size prevented layoffs. As did bringing in students from out of district, whose ADA does not cover the full cost of educating them. Their parents don’t pay parcel taxes.
Now, Mike, let’s hear what sort of parcel tax initiative YOU would support! I’m more than willing to have a civil, reasoned debate.
DG
Mike, Considering how gamey AUSD can get, further terms: by smallest dwelling, I mean smallest parcel, a condo, not an in-law unit or studio apartment. I would not support a measure that had any exemptions for seniors or the disabled. If the schools are so valuable, then they are valuable to us all. Further, no “mail-in only” ballots. No box in front of city hall for overnight deposits. No games.
Further, I believe the initiative should specify what these new tax funds would finance, none of this “including but not limited to” language. No phony “community panels” or “oversight commissions.” All such features of Measure E didn’t pass the smell test for honest, straight- forward electioneering.
And I think we need an open and honest debate about management. The $300/hour political consultants Supe Vital pays, who have racked up almost $100,000 in charges so far, the high-priced outside attorneys, the in-house webmaster whose work has been rife with spelling errors and mediocre design, (when she could hire an independent contractor with excellent skills at less expense, and there are several right here on the island), the efficiency of those under-enrolled schools no parents actually WALK their kids to, not when the SUV is so handy! Whether reduced class size improves outcomes isn’t proven either, so let’s talk about that. And I oppose bringing in students from outside the district, although I’m not sure that’s a deal breaker…
If AUSD continues to show such poor judgment, I will also work to defeat the re-election of certain Trustees, gladly holding the sword one promised to fall on! Now, as I said before, show us yours.
Dennis
Hey Dennis,
Just to clarify for you, I never did discover and can’t actually say whether taking the district charter is financially feasible. (Though the district’s own analysis showed it was not.) What I did discover was that this past year, for the first time that I could see, the per-student base revenue limit amount (which is the general pot of money the district gets to educate each kid) for charter schools appeared to be a few bucks more than the amount the district was receiving. If you’d like, I can re-send you the original exchange for further clarification.
Michele,
You may forget, but I sent you a link long ago, and now lost in the mists of time, proving that AUSD could indeed go all Charter, and at the time you acknowledged that it was so. Perhaps the numbers have changed, but the underlying proposition is still intriguing. No need for Trustees or a Superintendent! Charter schools generally outperform regular public schools, especially with English-learners and special ed kids and minorities, in every subject but Math. Go figure. Anyhow, I hope that before March the debate opens up and consists of more than scare tactics and sound bites.
Dennis,
I didn’t forget. Here’s the link, for anyone who may be interested in checking out the report from the Public Policy Institute of California:
http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=921
This is a March 2010 report about the revenue limit system, and it talks about the district-to-district variations in the revenue limit, which is the basic chunk of money the district receives to educate each student. The report uses 2007 numbers and included a bit on charters, and I was wondering what the current-year charter allotment was and how it compared to what Alameda Unified receives. The district, after consulting with some of the top charter experts in the state, concluded in July 2009 that it would not be financially feasible for the district to go all-charter. At that point, it was receiving more in per-student funding than charters were receiving. When the 2009-2010 budget passed a few months later, the rate Alameda Unified received per student – $4,946 – was less than the state’s charter school rate, which, according to the California Department of Ed website, was a little more for lower grades – $5,042 for K-3 – and quite a bit more for upper grades – $6,118. There are block grants for categorical funds (30 percent of the school district’s budget and economic impact aid, but I don’t know at this point how that compares to what the district gets.
In that light, I wrote an e-mail to Dennis thanking him for the PPIC report which said:
Hey – I meant to tell you that I got the part of the PPIC report that deals with the charter allotment – and you were right, based on the new numbers, the district would get more per student if they went charter (though in all fairness, this may not have been the case back in july).
In one sense, Michele Ma Belle, Buffalo Gal, all these numbers can be misleading, since the AUSD gets other funding, Spec Ed, and other funding which takes the per pupil funding up to about $14K per pupil per year. Long ago now, as it seems, I wrote an op-ed piece for the Sun which described how much money Vital has to play with for a class of only 20 students, far more than the cost of the teacher alone. I described how a business person would view all that with a jaundiced eye, since s/he would have no problem operating a classroom with all that revenue. One of the many reasons I claim the AUSD is so poorly managed it could/should go ALL CHARTER!
Have any of you “Yes on E” folks written out your checks for $359 payable to The Alameda Education Foundation?….or if you are a business who voted yes, whatever your new parcel tax increase would have been if the Measure passed? This can be a tax deductible donation (if you itemize). Shame on any of you who boycott a business for voting no.
One man’s “boycott” is another man’s “Freedom to do business with whomever he chooses for any reason.”
Good luck in March. I wouldn’t, however, pay Erwin & Muir $300/hr. to design the structure and strategy of that next campaign. They have already proven themselves incompetent, a total of $500K spent on Measure E. So I would just counsel Supe Vital, “Boycott Erwin & Muir!”
Re: Dennis Green says:
1, July 3, 2010 at 5:27 pm
“Given a choice between massive layoffs and a temporary cut in salary, what do you suppose the teachers will choose? Their unions? SF City workers chose furloughs. “A little less money or no job???” Doh. But with seniority and tenure, it could go either way with the teachers.”
I’m surprised you don’t know that last winter AEA negotiated and the teachers voted to give ourselves a pay cut for the upcoming school year. AEA employees will face a pay cut as the district will implement a 5 day furlough next June and cut all three staff development days. We also voted to increase class size to 25:1 in K-3. I’m sure that’s not enough sacrifice for you, Dennis, but I felt the need to add that information to this conversation.
It would be good if commenters with a political view that colors their remarks would disclose that so we can put their comments in context. For instance, Dennis Green has described himself in the past as a libertarian, a group that generally opposes taxes and government involvement in many public services it currently provides. If you’re against taxes in general, why bother discussing whether this particular one is good or bad? If you think all the schools should be charter, why be involved in the conversation about AUSD-run schools? It’s fine if that’s your point of view, but it seems like a waste of time to argue the details when you’re really just against taxes and publicly run schools.
Jan in her sophistry, (“Why bother?”), gets almost everything wrong. I said I’m an Independent with Libertarian leanings. I don’t oppose ALL taxes, just those funding the military and government bureaucracies. And I’m inclined to be suspicious of government and public agencies, like the schools. I don’t think AUSD should go all charter, just that it could if its management fails…in another parcel tax try…in balancing its budget…etc. Does Jan hold such hardened opinions there’s no room for discussion? Because that’s the way she makes it sound. I haven’t heard even one proponent of Measure E mention a willingness to compromise or over what terms or items. Schools couldn’t do any better. Teachers can’t take any cut in pay. Can’t close even one school. Tax has to be regressive and split-roll, etc.