Staffing cuts, future plans up for discussion
Tis the season for belt tightening at school districts all over Sonoma County, but the community turned out in force to inform the Healdsburg Unified School District Board of Trustees that at least one proposed cut was too deep.
The trustees sat and listed as parent after parent, and a few staff members, took to the podium to plead for retaining Joyce Lucid, a health technician at the lower grades.
All the comments, many of them accompanied by tears and several of them told through an interpreter, focused on Lucid’s kind and personal care given to the children in her care, from little ones with a bumped head or a scraped knee, to more serious issues such as heart problems, sunlight allergies, epilepsy and asthma.
There was also concern that her tasks would now be given to office staff, who would both lack the expertise and have to take away from their regular tasks to care for ill or injured students.
“I want to say that Joyce is an excellent person and a friend and we need her in the school,” said one mother through an interpreter. “We would like you to please consider the action with her position. On multiple occasions she called me because of a stomachache or headache, and when I got there she always was taking care of (my daughter) well. She has always been there to comfort her and help her feel secure. Joyce has magical words to comfort the children. You sent home a survey, asking ‘Is there someone at the school your student is comfortable going to’? and the answer is there is one person and that is Joyce.”
In all, more than a dozen spoke on Lucid’s behalf, with one or two speaking more generally of concern for all the classified cuts, with another plea especially for the hours of the registrars.
Before the public comment started, HUSD Superintendent Chris Vanden Heuvel explained how the district had developed the cost saving plan. He said the district is suffering from the loss of the redevelopment funds, and belt tightening is in order.
In advance of this decision, the district offered early retirement packages to both teachers and classified staff. Enough teachers took the deal that the district will not have to make additional cute (12 teachers agreed, with only six of them being replaced) but the classified staff only had four takers, significantly less that was hoped. Further research of other school districts in Sonoma and Napa students showed the district to be “over employed” in some areas, and they used that as guidance for the cuts proposed.
“These reductions were not made in respect to individuals or performance,” Vanden Heuvel said. “These are great employees.”
At the end of all the comments and following a brief discussion, the trustees decided to table a decision on the classified employee cuts to allow for additional research and discussion.
“Six years of meetings, and this is the crummiest one I’ve ever been to,” HUSD President Vince Dougherty said. “I was a volunteer in the schools when a lot of cuts were going on and I know Joyce, That being said, I can assure you that we hear you, so I think it would appropriate to table this and do some soul searching. Nothing is inevitable, but we should take a look at it.”
Vanden Heuvel also gave attendees some hope in terms of budgeting, as more revenue information should come in over the summer. “Things can change,” he admitted. “We can have a different conversation in July or August when we see what comes in. We can always reinstate should things change and come in.”
The meeting wound down with more mundane business, as Director of Curriculum and Instruction Erin Fender asked for board guidance on the next phase of their Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) and also presented the new California School Dashboard.
The California School Dashboard, a data tool meant to allow parents, staff, community members and other stakeholders to see the performance of schools over time. The dashboard is still under construction, and because it’s meant to reveal trends over time, it will take a few years to have enough data to make it comprehensive. The dashboard incorporates both “status” (current scores) and “change” (improvement from previous scores) — performance levels are based on the intersection of the two.
Performance levels are shown by icons that look like Trivial Pursuit game pieces, with five “pie slices” and colors.
While Fender admits there is still a fair bit of work to be done, she believes that with time there will be valuable information to be found there, especially in how it tracks change and improvement. She remains concerned however, about the age of the data.
“It’s a 2014-15 data, so its pretty old, and they are taking heat for it,” she said. “It will always be at least one year old.”
HUSD trustee Judy Velasquez is yet to be won over. “It’s probably just me, but I think those pie things are the most complicated things,” she said with a laugh. “I’ve looked at it over and over again and I can’t make heads or tails of it. I think this is horrific for anybody trying to find out anything.”
Finally, the first sale of bonds from Measure D was approved, and the new members of the Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee, several of which came over from the previous Bond Oversight Committee.
The new committee members are: Gerry Anderson, Jessica Anderson-Conard, Andy Esquivel, Chris Hanna, David Jones, Tara Smith and Katja West.
