At least one more meeting before decisions are made
On May 28, the Windsor Unified School District Board of Trustees met via Zoom along with members of their district’s administrative team, union representatives and other stakeholders to discuss the cuts that will need to be made in the wake of the governor’s announced cuts to the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). At the end of the meeting, the consensus was at least one more meeting was required to make decisions, but there is no question that pain is coming.
The workshop started with the trustees making statements about their thoughts about the process.
“I appreciate we have had a tidal wave of information over the last week or so,” said Bill Adams, setting the tone for the evening. “I recognize that I doubt today we will be making decisions, and in fact I suspect today will raise more questions than answers but, but I hope we get clear path forward. I would ask that we don’t leave without getting a clear set of the meetings we will need to have to make these decisions. I want to express my thanks to (Chief Business Officer) Lois (Standring) and the team operating in very, very difficult circumstances — working on a fast schedule with changing and incomplete information, and we must have three-year budget at the end of June with a final, positive number.”
“There’s been a lot of discussion on social media, and so we want to make sure you understand we are not taking this lightly, it hits all of us very hard,” said board president Eric Heitz. “The discussion of paying the superintendent less or cutting one or two admin’s positions, well it’s far more broad than that. It’s 10% and we were already falling short … we have to look deeper.”
“We are having to act on actions not yet confirmed, so we have to ask what do we do to prepare for if the information is as dire as we’ve been given, when the governor releases his budget on June 15. We hope this will get better over time, but we have to prepare for the worst until we get different information,” said Superintendent Brandon Krueger. “I know a lot of forces are working in a positive way to make impacts on public education, and we are the doing best we can with the info we have. We want to make sure cuts are methodical and phased in, and tempered by being more and more concern about what will schools look like in the fall.”
Early discussions focused on the issues, with a focus on budgetary impacts, facing the return to school in the fall in an unknown environment due to COVID-19.
“We basically are looking down the road at three scenarios. First would be should the COVID shelter in place restrictions stay in place, we would remain in a virtual distance learning environment with some additional add-ons and changes to grading and structure to how we roll it out,” said Educational Services Director Lisa Saxon. “Second would be a hybrid where students, with social distancing guidelines in place, attend class on some days and remain in distance learning for other days. The third would be in the event that all protocols are lifted and able to return to a traditional face-to-face environment that we left on March 13.
“We’re monitoring daily what the news seems to be and we’re planning to flush out plans and scenarios for the two new ones; we know how to do face-to-face and how it might look moving forward,” she concluded.
Heitz pointed out that costs could increase, with things like temperature checks, additional cleaning and providing personal protective equipment to staff.
“It is true that even in a 100% face-to-face there may be restrictions in place,” agreed Saxon.” What we now know is that a hybrid model will cost a significant amount of money to implement and keep social distancing protocols in place.”
Much of the information presented at the workshop was identical to that which was presented at the previous meeting, including the proposed cuts and the timing or phasing of them. The new pieces of information included Human Resources Director Chris Canelake presenting a timeline of actions ready to be taken should the governor’s proposed cuts go through, automatically triggering a new period for layoffs for certificated employees. While it is unclear if this new period will be opened up (according to Heitz the state can override the automatic opening, and have done so in the past), Canelake presented the steps involved and stated that the district is ready to take action should layoffs be back on the table.
In addition, Standring offered up the proposed cuts in a phased list. (See sidebar). There was some confusion among those on the call as well as the larger community over what timelines are in effect, and what can and should be decided on before the budget was finalized on June 16, and which can be part of the state-allowed 45-day revision after the vote.
“Every year it happens that school districts have to get their budgets in and completed before the state budget is adopted, so the education code allows us a 45-day revision, where we take into account what happens in the governor’s budget we didn’t know about,” explained Standring. “We may come up with things that didn’t make it into the June 16 version, but we can put in the 45-day revision. This year will be well known for its fluidity. We will be adjusting many times throughout the year.”
Though mathematically it makes the most sense to make bigger cuts earlier, in terms of achieving a positive figure at the end of the three-year budgeting period, by the time this meeting came around, support seemed to be shifting toward doing more shallow cuts this year and seeing if the state budget can recover enough to provide assistance or relief against harsher cuts in coming years. However, if the economic recovery doesn’t occur, subsequent cuts in subsequent year will have to be even larger.
In addition, Standring reported that doing no cuts, and utilizing the $1 million recently gifted the district from the Lytton Tribe and selling the Windsor Creek site for $4.7 million, would still result in a $4.9 million deficit at the end of year three.
By the end of the meeting, trustees were no closer to finalizing the cuts and had planned to have another meeting on June 2. However, Standring pushed back a bit about her ability to get the budget finished in time if any meetings occurred after that date. She also pointed out that, simply put, things not approved would not appear in the budget, and those negative consequences would simply have to be submitted to the county as is.
In the meantime, trustees and staff will be gathering additional input and information, with the hope to make decision on June 2.
Before that meeting, the district will undergo one more change, where the job of Superintendent shifts from the retiring Brandon Krueger to new hire Jeremy Decker.
