The Vanguard has learned that Davis Enterprise Reporter Jeff Hudson, who has covered the Davis School District for ten years, has also been working for Tahir Ahad since August 2008 on an educational newsletter called EdBrief. It was last year that the Vanguard presented a four part series on Tahir Ahad who served as DJUSD’s CBO from 1999 to 2006. During his tenure at DJUSD he used district resources and district personnel to form his company Total School Solutions. As we discovered, Mr. Ahad took district personnel from DJUSD and hired them to work concurrently with his company. This enabled him capital and resources to help start up his company which has now greatly expanded its influence throughout the state.
It was a year ago when the Davis Schools Foundation led the way for this community to come together to save our schools. In a dramatic fundraising campaign, they did what many thought was impossible, they raised $1.7 which along with a better economic picture and some one-time monies, saved the district from steep cuts–up to 114 teaching jobs were saved. Now here we are again, despite the passage of Measure W to provide an addition $2.4 million in school support, we find ourselves facing a similar if less severe problem.
On Thursday night the Davis Joint Unified School District formally passed the second interim budget that would show the Davis school budget balanced through 2010-11. In order to do that, the school district had to send layoff notices to dozens of employees including roughly 40 teachers.
However, the really bad news was delivered by the district’s CBO, Associate Superintendent Bruce Colby toward the end of his presentation. The budget’s ink is barely dry and it is already likely out of date.
Perhaps we thought this thing was about to get better. The Stock Market had its best week of the year. California legislators just less a month ago came to a budget agreement.
But just when we thought we had dodged the worst of it, the next shoe has fallen. The state Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor announced that due to the falling economy and declining tax revenue, state revenues will be another $8 billion lower than expect next fiscal year.
As the California Teacher’s Association organizes statewide to draw attention to the teaches who may lose their job, Davis Teachers will be wearing pink today, although there will be no formal protest.
Davis Teachers continue to weigh their options according to a source. Last week a survey was soundly defeated 86% no to 14% yes that would have considered taking a pay cut.
Paul Simon once wrote: “People hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest.” I feel like that on many occasions as I write these articles and commentaries and people come away with sometimes the opposite of what I was really saying. A reader yesterday sent me this article, I thank him because it sums up my view and the way I feel many times as I write columns.
The author of the blog was recently laid off from Dartmouth. He writes:
The final toll at Tuesday night’s meaning was probably best and succinctly summed up by an off-hand comment from School Board Member Richard Harris who proclaimed, “the whole thing sucks.” He quickly followed up that the school district is “not going to be as good as it was, but it’s going to be as good as we can possibly make it.”
The toll of nearly 40 teachers really understates by a large magnitude the final decision of the school board. In addition to that there were 17 classified positions lost, they that during closed session to decision that another 35 temporary position would be terminated.
It is understandable that questions arise when reading headlines about prioritization of a track and stadium renovation on the same page describing possible cuts to teaching positions and/or salaries. The most important fact in this seemingly incomprehensible situation is that by law, District facilities funds are completely separate and distinct from general operations funds used for teacher salaries and programs. Further, a loan for facility projects has no connection to funds used for the operations budget, and funds to pay the loan come from school facility tax assessments, not parcel taxes for teachers and programs.
DJUSD knows what it is like to try to reduce a $4.5 million deficit because they attempted to do so last year. $4.5 million would have meant at least 114 teacher layoffs, possibly a closed school, definitely some ended programs like music, art, maybe da Vinci High as well–at least as they knew it. But while Davis experienced threats, they never had to go through with it. The May revise came in better than the midyear budget estimates. The Democratic legislature restored funding cuts. Davis used one-time monies from its reserves and got a $1.7 million gift and was able to escape last year largely unfazed.
I say all of that because at its core, $4.5 million in budget cuts would have been devastating. Now imagine $7 million in cuts. That is what Woodland is facing right now. That is what the Woodland School Board did on Thursday night, they voted to reduce expenses by $7 million. That is more than twice the deficit Davis is facing right now.
Back in December, the DJUSD school board made the decision to prioritize the modernization of the football stadium over that of Emerson Junior High. This has generated a lot of criticism for the school district from a number of different quarters. In general this criticism has been ill-founded and based on misconceptions of funding and other factors.
The purpose of this article is to clarify some of the issues. While there seems to be a good deal of criticism to go around, it should be criticism that is fact-based rather than based on misinformation.
Under ordinary conditions, it seems unlikely that one would find a person more supportive of teachers than myself. I come from a family of teachers, I have myself been a teacher at times, and I believe in general teachers are unpaid for the importance of the job that they perform. Most people who suggest that teachers have an easy job and work only nine months, have either never taught themselves or never put a full effort into teaching. I am constantly amazed that teachers have the stamina to teach for eight hours and then go home to grade papers (no easy task) and prepare lesson plans.
I say this because after reading the full comments from the teachers from Casar Chavez Elementary School who also spoke up during public comment on Thursday evening at the school board meeting, I’m not sure I could really disagree with them more.
For the first time, DJUSD last night began working with real budget numbers rather than rough approximations. The bottom line is that California education took a pretty hard hit and unfortunately, they did not get the kind of full categorical flexibility that they were hoping for. In the coming days and weeks, we will examine some of these numbers more thoroughly.
The school district in order to answer questions from district personnel about the budget and budget process has put together a Frequency Asked Question (FAQ) sheet. They put one together prior to Wednesday’s meeting and now will put one together based on the questions received at Wednesday’s meeting.
Here’s the original FAQ that was emailed to all district personnel.
There was a surreal feeling sitting in the partially filled auditorium on the Davis High School Campus. The all-employee meeting was perhaps closer to half employees, but still a robust showing. Superintendent James Hammond, about to lay it on the line for the teachers and other employees, did not recognize the uniqueness of the moment. This wouldn’t have happened under his predecessor.
Perhaps it sunk home at the end, after the bad news had been laid forth, all reasonable options had been exhausted, he thanked those in attendance for coming, and they responded by clapping. It is not often news of this sort is delivered and you hear clapping, but that is what happened on this day.
Yesterday, the Vanguard published excerpts from the Vanguard Radio interview with DTA President Cathy Haskell and incoming President Ingrid Salim. One of the recommendations the teachers made during this interview, was support for self-qualifying.
The Davis School District is facing a multiyear, multimillion dollar shortfall due to the state’s economic and budget crisis. Complicating the already problematic nature of the state’s economy is the political impasse that has gripped the state’s budget process. That has meant not only are local districts facing budget cuts, they are dealing with large unknowns. The word leaking out of Sacramento is that the big five have reached a tentative agreement that could be announced today. Many are expected the results of that to be devastating to local governments and schools.
The headlines that came out of Thursday’s school board meeting were dramatic with the Superintendent suggesting that the top four administrators would take double the pay cut that they were asking teachers to take in order to send the message that they were serious about the school budget crisis. Beneath those sensational headlines is a truth that is every bit as bleak but perhaps not quite as sexy.
The truth is somewhere in between here. The first factor that people need to understand is that in some ways what was discussed on Thursday night was the choice of the school board. They were presented options the previous week and could have chosen to self-qualify.
CTA Launches Campaign Against Class Size Reduction Flexibility
Schools
If you read through the numbers reported on Thursday, Davis Schools will likely given some measure of flexibility survive without major teacher layoffs at least through 2010-11. The district got some more good news perhaps when the House passed the stimulus plan that will contain for schools.
The Davis School Board met last night for a budget workshop. Given the fiscal situation and uncertainties in some ways the district stands in a much more challenging landscape than they did last year at this time. The chief reason for that is that while they are working off the governor’s budget assumptions, we do not really know what the budget is going to look like if and when it is passed by the legislature.
The Vanguard has learned that Davis Enterprise Reporter Jeff Hudson, who has covered the Davis School District for ten years, has also been working for Tahir Ahad since August 2008 on an educational newsletter called EdBrief. It was last year that the Vanguard presented a four part series on Tahir Ahad who served as DJUSD’s CBO from 1999 to 2006. During his tenure at DJUSD he used district resources and district personnel to form his company Total School Solutions. As we discovered, Mr. Ahad took district personnel from DJUSD and hired them to work concurrently with his company. This enabled him capital and resources to help start up his company which has now greatly expanded its influence throughout the state.
The final toll at Tuesday night’s meaning was probably best and succinctly summed up by an off-hand comment from School Board Member Richard Harris who proclaimed, “the whole thing sucks.” He quickly followed up that the school district is “not going to be as good as it was, but it’s going to be as good as we can possibly make it.”
By Mike Satre – 
There was a surreal feeling sitting in the partially filled auditorium on the Davis High School Campus. The all-employee meeting was perhaps closer to half employees, but still a robust showing. Superintendent James Hammond, about to lay it on the line for the teachers and other employees, did not recognize the uniqueness of the moment. This wouldn’t have happened under his predecessor.
Yesterday, the Vanguard published excerpts from the Vanguard Radio interview with DTA President Cathy Haskell and incoming President Ingrid Salim. One of the recommendations the teachers made during this interview, was support for self-qualifying.