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Trustees with the San Ramon Valley Unified School District signed off last week on two resolutions to cut a number of positions in the district ahead of the next school year due to a shortfall of funds and the need to reduce spending by millions in the wake of budget challenges.
The board voted unanimously on March 5 to approve a resolution eliminating the equivalent of 33 classified positions – tentatively agreed to during bargaining with the California School Employees Association – as well as 29 full-time teacher liaison positions starting next year due to a lack of funds.
The first resolution was “regretfully” motioned for approval by Rachel Hurd and seconded by Jesse vanZee, with no public comments or further discussion by the board or staff. The move is estimated to reduce spending by $545,000 per year and reduce categorical fund expenditures by approximately $804,500.
The second item cutting the 29 teacher on special assignment positions spurred one public comment, as well as a number of emotional responses from trustees and staff.
“I wanted to share my disappointment with the district for eliminating the MTSS (multi-tiered support systems) positions,” Los Cerros Middle School teacher Kim Peters said. “You have invested all of this time and money into a group of people that have made major impacts on our campuses. And I’m one voice of many. We have successful programs in place because of our MTSS liaison. We have teachers finally being supported in terms of tiered intervention, something that we never had before.”
Peters pointed to the Los Cerros liaison she currently works with as an example of critical support for teachers and students, pointing to her expertise in learning support programs and technology and wealth of data aimed at supporting teachers and finding ways to identify students who could benefit from before and after school intervention.
“I don’t feel confident that there’s a plan in place to support our staff,” Peters said. “After these positions are cut, I feel like the carpet has been pulled out from under us and all this incredible work is going to end. I hope you understand what a detriment this is to our students, staff, and community. And I truly hope there’s something in the works to support and continue this work.”
Several trustees responded to Peters’ remarks, pointing to their trepidation about the cuts and how much value the positions had created.
“This is one of the hardest things I’ll ever vote on,” Hurd said. “The need for these positions was such a long time coming, and the money we received from the state and the federal government to deal with the aftermath of COVID created the opportunity to finally do this.”
Hurd added that Peters’ emphasis on the value of the liaison in her own classroom was something officials had heard across the board from those working with teachers in the 29 liaison positions on the chopping block that night, and noted that the district would be seeking to restore and continue building upon those positions during better financial times.
“And so you asked, what’s the plan, what can we do? We can all get going and work on Measure F, and that’s all I’m going to say because I’m not allowed to say much on it from this dais,” Hurd said.
Trustee Susanna Ordway also emphasized the value of the positions being cut that night and what a difficult decision it was for the board, as well as noting that the district would seek to restore the positions down the road and pointing briefly toward Measure F, a continued and supplemental partial tax measure set for a special election in May.
In the interim, assistant superintendent of human resources Melanie Jones noted that the teachers in the liaison positions being eliminated would still be employed by the district.
“Our educators with employment rights with the district will be reassigned back to the classroom,” Jones said. “Many of them will go back to their original school site prior to becoming a liaison. And so our director of certificated human resources Keri Van de Star, will be working closely with them to identify, to kind of get some information with respect to their preferences and then be assigning them back to the classroom for next school year.
Superintendent John Malloy emphasized that the elimination of the positions at this point was made for budgetary reasons only, and not meant to reflect or undermine how the liaison system had impacted administrators, teachers and students.
“This isn’t about value,” Malloy said. “This is about unfortunate challenges related to one-time funding that we used. As Rachel Hurd shared, we are absolutely committed to figuring out as we move into the last part of the year and new information emerges, and hopefully other funding sources emerge as well so that we can bring back to you. Again, that doesn’t in any way negate how important this has been. So I want to put that commitment on the table, from a cabinet perspective.”
Trustee Shelley Clark motioned to approve the resolution despite calling it “probably the hardest vote” she had ever participated in. It was seconded by vanZee and approved unanimously.
The elimination of the 29 teacher on special assignment positions is estimated to reduce spending at the district by $4,426,000.
So the big shocker is that temporary COVID funds from the state and/or federal government were, well, temporary….
In the February 20th SRVUSD Board meeting, all five Board members approved a 6% teacher salary increase, retroactive to last July, plus a 1% “one-time” increment (along with proportionate benefit increases).
To show the Contra Costa County Board of Education a supposed indication of financial stewardship, the SRVUSD Board stipulated that it would find $10,000,000 in “savings” to balance out this latest salary / benefit splurge, so that’s where the layoffs come in. They’ve used the same “pink-slip” playbook in their previous parcel-tax campaigns.
The 6% (+1%) salary surge was preceded in 2022 with an 8.5% blowout (also retroactive, also with a “one-time” 1% bonus). Transparent California shows a partial effect of the 8.5% increase in its posting of SRVUSD compensation amounts for 2022, at https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2022/school-districts/contra-costa/san-ramon-valley-unified . 2023 amounts are not yet compiled there.
What is shown is that as of calendar 2022, 639 SRVUSD employees had total compensation exceeding $150,000. And the teachers among them enjoy just 186 employment days per year, vs. the 240 days worked annually by Joe and Suzy Sixpack.
The further real-world context is an enrollment drop-off of just over 3,000 students since SRVUSD renewed its parcel tax in 2015. But SRVUSD’s ravenous money consumers are back on the ballot again now, in a special vote-by-mail-only May 7 election, in order to keep their gravy train on track, rolling onward to their personal El Dorado.
Measure E would renew the present $144 parcel tax, but add an annual inflation escalator (which is ignored by the tax promoters in their dishonest ballot arguments). Measure F would add a flat $98. The layoffs? They’ve used the same “pink-slip” playbook in their previous parcel-tax campaigns.
The District wants to pretend that nothing has changed in its staffing needs, and to keep its ever increasing spending trajectory. They’ll continue creating sob-story issues designed to draw in sympathetic support by voters who don’t pay attention to District maneuvers and stratagems.
The fact is that just since 2015, SRVUSD spending has reached $127 Million to $158 Million ahead of the combined effect of inflation and enrollment growth (now decline) since then.
See https://www.betterschoolsnotmoretaxes.com/srvusd-finances for the real-world situation . SRVUSD always pleads poverty — and creates fake crises — until it’s time for the next pay raise.
Sensible, attentive voters will say “NO” to both Measures E and F.
Sorry, I had paragraphs separated when I posted the comment above, and webpages formatted in a way that used to provide live links in the past. It appears that some formatting fix-ups in this new DanvilleSanRamon platform are still needed.