State Takeover: Bad for our Schools,
Bad for Businesses, Bad for Natomas
Bad for Businesses, Bad for Natomas
Submitted by Karen Quant, Parent Chair NUSD Budget Advisory Committee & Scott Dosick, Parent Chair, NUSD Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee Budget Advisory Committee Member
 |
| QUANT |
For almost two years, we have participated in budget related activities alongside Natomas Unified School District staff, Natomas Teachers’ Association and Classified School Employees Association representatives. As a result of our efforts, we have arrived at three evidence-based conclusions:
 |
| DOSICK |
1. The District made mistakes. It spent funds it shouldn’t have. It was amazingly and disturbingly slow to react to the fiscal crisis.
2. NUSD’s finance staff, led by Assistant Superintendent John Christ, are honest and competent. School districts throughout the state and country experience multi-million dollar swings between projected and actual revenues and expenses. Funds are not being funneled into hidden offshore accounts. The numbers presented by the District are real.
3. It’s not the teachers’ fault that we are in this mess. Teachers didn’t overspend. Teachers didn’t make the decision to delay the issuance of pink slips.
All that said we are left with one simple and inescapable truth: we cannot solve this budget crisis, we cannot prevent the otherwise imminent state takeover without our teachers. Teachers make up the largest portion of the budget. Everything else that can be cut has been. Our libraries are closed, campus police are gone, counselors /health assistants are down to a skeleton staff, while 30 or more students are crammed into each and every classroom.
So, where do we go from here? We have two options. Either we reach a compromise, buying us and our new superintendent time to try and work out our problems, or we let the state come in and decide for us. Keep in mind, this is the same state of California that has a $25 billion deficit of its own to address and is largely responsible for the mess our schools are in by cutting education funding by over 25% from five years ago.
If we go the State takeover route, we will be forced take out a loan for the difference we couldn’t compromise on. According to the Sacramento County Office of Education, that will probably be close to $20 to $30 million. How do we plan to pay that back? The interest alone would run $60,000 to $70,000 a month – the equivalent of laying off an additional teacher each month!
Supt. Plough has the hard task of getting to know a new district, hear its problems from all sides and then suggest solutions. So far, she has been doing just that. We need to remember that she did not get us into this mess. Can she lead us out of it? She clearly has the knowledge, experience, and integrity needed to do just that.
If the state takes over, Ms. Plough is gone. We’ve seen firsthand how important it is to have a strong leader at the helm – a leader who is responsive and responsible to us as parents, tax payers, and voters. A state-appointed receiver will be none of these things.
If the state takes over, we will lose more students from our schools, lose education revenue, property values will decline and businesses will be loathe to locate here.
The Natomas Teachers Association is meeting today. While we recognize the financial hardships this would place on you and your families, we are asking you to stand up and be a part of the solution. We cannot do it without you. It’s not politics – it’s math.
Mr. Dosick is the parent of a second grader and preschooler. Mrs. Quant has a second grader and fifth grader.
Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.3
Well said.
Oh, I sure hope they heard you! My concern is that so many of the teachers don’t live here in Natomas, they don’t realize how devastating the takeover would be to our community, not just our children. Thank you both.
Tristan Godt
Actually many of our teachers live in Natomas. Over a 100 at last count and we are down to a little over 400 teachers after all of the layoffs these past two years. That’s about a quarter of us. Again, my concern is that there seems to be a great many misinformed people commenting. All but one of the NTA exec board own homes in Natomas. The idea that we have a competent CFO is a huge sign that the authors above are misinforming you. Not only should we hold his dept responsible (someone should be!) but in previous districts the same problems were reported. We teachers do our reseach on such trends. Thanks for titling these as opinions, because they are definitely not citing facts.
NTA- I would not consider 1/4 to be in opposition to Tristan’s comment that “many don’t live in Natomas.” She actually should have said most, since those are the facts you have provided.
Dr. Ferrar doesn’t work here anymore. NTA can’t continue to hold the new Superintendent (who does live in Natomas) responsible for the mistakes of the last guy. At some point, it all ends up in consequences for the kids.
I hope I am wrong and will stand corrected if I am — but I predict a stalemate and state takeover with teacher layoffs and loss of local control of our school district. Here’s why:
1. The maority of teachers are “safe” from layoffs because their contract guarantees those with the most tenure are the last to be laid off.
2. The more years on the job teachers have, the more likely they will be to vote against a compromise.
3. The more years on the job teachers have, the closer they are to retirement, so the less they will have to work within and deal with any negative consequences.
4. The longer a teacher has been employed by the district, the more time they have had to form negative opinions about the trustworthiness of district leadership, regardless of changes already made, rightly or wrongly.
The same thing happened at the City of Sacramento in the International Stationary Engineers Local 39, the union that represents most city employees, including Parks & Recreation, the largest city department. While fire and police unions voted for concessions and avoided layoffs, Local 39 refused — the majority of Local 39 members voted to keep their jobs with no pay cuts, which resulted in less tenured members losing their jobs. So much for solidarity and “brotherhood.” The result was dead grass, shuttered bathrooms, knee-high weeds, and residents forced to take matters into their own hands in order to prevent living across the street from neglected city parks.
I hope the teacher’s union does the right thing for the community and its less tenured members by voting to accept concessions that will avoid district insolvency, state takeover, and loss of local control of our schools.
Between this post, and the last several made by NTA Executive Board on another post, I feel NTA is attacking the parents. The parents in this discussion are the same ones involved in our schools and community and have supported teachers 100% over the years.
Every other report I have read cites to the school budget and concludes there is nothing left to cut. Examples are provided to support the position.
Since NTA has reviewed the budget, what other solutions does NTA recommend? Where else can the dsitrict make $30 million in cuts that won’t affect classroom instruction?
If you can identify these cuts the Natomas community will support you.
I’d be willing to work on and campaign for an additional property parcel fee to help offset the cuts that are taking place. A parcel fee equal to the number of years that the teachers have had to take cuts. We are nto able to avoid cuts now but we can work to make the teacher “whole” with future funding. However, if the NTA refuses to help avoid the state take over I will not support any initiative that will benefit the NTA. I most like will move my children out of district; not because of the quality of education (I am very happy with the instruction and school my children currently attend)but due to the NTA. The NTA executive board seems to only care about their dues paying members than the district as a whole. that has to eventually feed down to the members themselves.
I would like to agree that that a state takeover is not a good idea, but the way the school district is swindling money from those who have sacrificed is also not a good idea.
Classified staff found out about three weeks ago that the district had been back filling furloughed work days with Certificated staff. So, what was normally a $100 to $130 job per day now became a $400 -$430 dollar job a day. Did the district save money with this move? NO! They not only took the money that the Classified employees sacrificed, but they gave it to Certificated and at an even greater cost to the financial heath to the district. Who was behind this? Ken Whittemore and Bobbie Plough. There was an employee that refused to back fill and Ms. Plough went to her office and gave her a direct order to do back fill even though it was a violation of the agreement. So your wonderful Bobbie Plough is not so wonderful…now is she.
The union asked for this to stop immediately and we were told it would be…but it still continues.
CSEA just like NTA are waiting to see REAL numbers…no one can explain the great fluctuation. If you can, please do so. I am certain that you can not as you don’t have the budget documents and disclosures that I have.
In a meeting not to long ago with SCOE,(Sacramento County Office of Education)who came in to assist in the budget to reduce spending so the district could produce a qualified budget even said that THEY don’t trust the numbers! They have been in the district for over a year now and they haven’t helped with anything. In fact the “freeze” committee was created by them, but not run by them. SCOE isn’t doing much of anything except creating these time constricting committees that are not being run by them but rather the same district employees who got us into this mess in the first place.
As far as the comment that NTA is attacking the parents…are you kidding me? Explain how that is happening.
I agree that the tenured teachers really could care less about layoffs and don’t want to make concessions. They know that they won’t be touched so if they don’t take anything then nothing will happen. Heck, they said that this past year and due to the fact of not making enough concessions teachers were laid off and they didn’t even care about their own people. That is sad.
Just like NTA, CSEA want to see real numbers. $30 million is not the amount in question. It is 8.9 million over the next two years.
None of us work for free! What if someone threw it in your face that “X” person would not be getting services. Kids or adults or animals…what have you…no one works for free. Those threats are long old. Don’t you know that the majority of us working here have kids in these schools? Give me a break. Ask questions, don’t point fingers and for goodness sakes…leave the victimization out of this.
Currently NTA and CSEA are in negotiations. Management has ratified that they would take the 7.9% cuts.
Kate – there are many things to respond to…
One number is wrong, management did not take 7.9%:
8.06% Salary Reduction for Unrepresented Certificated and Unrepresented Classified Employees: Administrative, Classified Management, Classified Supervisory, Confidential and Certificated Program Specialists for 2011-2012 and 2012-2013.
As for “real numbers”, I’m not sure what else you could ask for that the District has not provided.
I can’t speak to the first paragraph. But I do know that in my private sector office, when one group is not present ( due to furloughs, or other absences) the work still needs to be done and as a result, we all sometimes have to do tasks out of class. IS this the most efficient, no, but at the same time -work must be completed. And sometimes the boss even takes out the trash, it is called teamwork and doing more with less.
Your attacks of Distict professionals only speaks to your unprofessionalism. Facts are important and accurate information needs to be shared.
Thanks to the authors of this opinion piece for clearly putting themselves “out there” on the record. While I don’t know Mr. Dosick, I do know that Ms. Quant is a dedicated parent with great involvement in the District.
It sure would be nice to know who “NTA Executive Board” is (i.e. a person’s name). I don’t think it is the NTA President as she IS posting under her own name. You make many strong statements…some helpful information, some borderline attacks. Clearly, these posts cannot be the response of “The Board” of NTA..they come too quickly. So, I caution anyone reading the comments from “NTA Executive Board” to take that thought into consideration.
If “NTA Executive Board” truly believes the current CFO is not competent, then it would seem to me that you could work that into your negotiations. Clearly, you can’t have a stronger bargaining hand than you do right now.
For those who think a parcel tax for education is the answer to the problems the District faces, think fat chance. I myself would gladly vote for it; however, there are many voters in the District that don’t have children (or have children they have taken out of District schools). Given that such a measure would require a 2/3 vote to pass, it would be a miracle to pull that off.
As to the request for “Real” numbers…budgets are projections based on the best information you have available, constantly updated as additional information becomes available. “Real” numbers will be available months AFTER the school year is complete. We must make decisions based on that best data we have, and that can never be “Real” unless you have a crystal ball.
The bottom line is this. The District has X money to work with (according to Trustee Burns ½ of funding received in the past is gone). A quick review of the District’s 2009-2010 financial statements (which are admittedly very difficult to follow so I may have my numbers wrong) of $60 million the District spends, $45 million goes to payroll and benefits. So, taking the emotion and the heartbreak out of the equation, where else other than salaries can the majority of the cuts come from? Even in the event of a State takeover, other than the one time loan they walk in with, they won’t have a magic way to increase revenue…cuts will still need to be made.
If the teachers give up the 7.9% and bail out NUSD what is the guarantee that this will solve the problem? What happens in two years when the district has not changed it’s habit of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul “cash flow” problem? Do they then go back to the teachers and ask for another 8%? Teachers have already lost jobs and made concessions. There are increased class sizes and $0 for supplies. Teachers have already received a 6% paycut with furloughs for the last two years. Apparently that wasn’t enough and the district obviously has not changed any practices that put us in this mess in the first place.
How can we have faith in a Finance Dept. that has been ignoring SCOE’s alerts of financial trouble for more than four years? As Supt. Bobby Plough put it, “a two inch stack of paperwork from SCOE” regarding the districts lack of fiscal solvency. In big business financial flubs of this kind would have resulted in the responisble parties being canned. Why hasn’t NUSD’s finance dept. been held accountable?
This is not a new problem. This is a problem that has been ongoing for many years. What is the definition of insanity people? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By allowing the district to continue with business as usual is insanity. That is what NTA is trying to change before agreeing to the amount of concessions being asked for by the district. However, instead of working with the teachers and showing good faith, the district decides to seek an impass and forego negotiations.
Right now the district is like a stray dog looking to be fed and the teachers are what’s for dinner. What happens when you feed a stray dog? They always come back for more. It sounds as though this Natomas Buzz blogging community would like the teachers to take the paycut again. Will you feel the same way in two years when the district’s financial woes are balanced on the teachers backs AGAIN or will you back your teachers and demand that the district make the necessary changes to create solvency?
If the teachers give up the 7.9% and bail out NUSD what is the guarantee that this will solve the problem? What happens in two years when the district has not changed it’s habit of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul “cash flow” problem? Do they then go back to the teachers and ask for another 8%? Teachers have already lost jobs and made concessions. There are increased class sizes and $0 for supplies. Teachers have already received a 6% paycut with furloughs for the last two years. Apparently that wasn’t enough and the district obviously has not changed any practices that put us in this mess in the first place.
How can we have faith in a Finance Dept. that has been ignoring SCOE’s alerts of financial trouble for more than four years? As Supt. Bobby Plough put it, “a two inch stack of paperwork from SCOE” regarding the districts lack of fiscal solvency. In big business financial flubs of this kind would have resulted in the responisble parties being canned. Why hasn’t NUSD’s finance dept. been held accountable?
This is not a new problem. This is a problem that has been ongoing for many years. What is the definition of insanity people? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By allowing the district to continue with business as usual is insanity. That is what NTA is trying to change before agreeing to the amount of concessions being asked for by the district. However, instead of working with the teachers and showing good faith, the district decides to seek an impass and forego negotiations.
Right now the district is like a stray dog looking to be fed and the teachers are what’s for dinner. What happens when you feed a stray dog? They always come back for more. It sounds as though this Natomas Buzz blogging community would like the teachers to take the paycut again. Will you feel the same way in two years when the district’s financial woes are balanced on the teachers backs AGAIN or will you back your teachers and demand that the district make the necessary changes to create solvency?
NTA has agreed to 5% in cuts for two years (about $5000 per teacher per year). $85 per student for two years ($170 total) would make up the rest of what the district is seeking. Parents and teachers need to work together to solve this budget crisis.
I cannot believe that someone would suggest that parents donate the rest of the money. Come on! Our family has suffered through 3 furlough days a month for the last year and a half! Thats 36 DAYS A YEAR and 15% of our income. I know we are not the only family who is suffering through the same thing or even worse. You cannot ask parents to make up the difference.
Couldn’t have said it better myself, “Your Favorite Teacher”!
Didn’t our current school board president say at a forum last month that “we will not go into receivership”? Politicians are funny that way.
But I digress.
I keep hearing things like “let’s not discuss how we got here. We just need the teachers and CSEA to take the proposed cuts to save the district, blah blah blah…” Now what’s interesting is that since these groups aren’t budging, the district has now decided to paint them in a negative light while making themselves look like they’ve been the good guys all along. In a crisis, I guess I couldn’t expect anything less. Everyone just conveniently forgets that this state takeover information has been on the radar for quite some time now. The superintendent herself brought this up at a board meeting MONTHS ago. Did the board notify community members? But of course not! Can’t have the district looking bad during campaign season now can we? So we’ll keep all the bad stuff hush-hush until we get re-elected. How convenient.
So because we’re now in this crisis, here’s how this will probably play out based on current trends: District naturally makes teachers and classified employees the scapegoats. They’ll hound them until they fold, breathe a huge sigh of relief if we manage to avoid receivership, and then (here’s the icing on the cake) carry on with business as usual until the next emergency arises. Borrowed line: What is the definition of insanity people? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That describes our current leadership in a nice way.
You may be shocked to know this, but there are actually many parents like myself who would like a state takeover to finally clean house from top to bottom. And please spare me the details of what a state takeover means. I’ve thoroughly done my homework and I strongly advocate it. I mean seriously, it’s saying A LOT when our teachers & classified employees have lost ALL trust and faith in their current leadership. Why shouldn’t parents and community members as well?
Scott: Talk of State takeover was hush hush? I don’t think so…anyone paying attention to District business knew this was on the radar. Most of us were taking a wait and see attitude. Besides, as parents the ONLY thing we can do to buy the District (management and teachers) more time to fix this mess is to ask teachers for salary concessions. Like it or not, that is not only “out” at this point.
You say “teachers & classified employees have lost ALL trust and faith in their current leadership” If the teachers have lost faith in the District leaders, they have no one to blame but their own union. NTA gave us a majority of these board members. NTA has endorsed 4 of the 5 current board members – Kaplan in 2006 and Tran, Roberts and Heredia in 2008 – in their election runs for the Board of NUSD. NTA did not endorse anyone in the 2010 election, which leads to another question…why not? District voters might have been eager to hear who you think would do a better job…I know I would have considered it.
Well said Scott, because what Katie Lynn stated on their post is the same thing my neighbor told me.
When I asked her why it was important to not backfill furlough days, she explained it was for a lot of reasons, the first on being the district agreed to not backfill. Not backfilling the furlough days is how the savings was supposed to be generated. If the classified employees gave furlough days, and then subs were used in their place, no money would be saved. Not only did this district bring in subs, they brought in sub teachers at an astronomical cost. This decision actually cost the district more money.
I would encourage you to talk to the classified employees since they are the people in the know. I also heard anyone from the public can sit in on CSEA negotiations; all you have to do is make an appointment. I’m going to request a seat; I hope to see you there.
Elizabeth –
Thank you for correcting me on what management took. It was in fact 8.06.
However, you saying that I am unprofessional is uncalled for. I work in this district ever day and see with my own eyes what goes on. Facts are facts. If someone in a group is acting a certain way then I am going to broadcast that information. That doesn’t make me unprofessional…that makes the group or said persons unprofessional.
You really need to read the news more closely Elizabeth as the CSEA contract that the employees agreed to states that there would be no back filling.
I am sure that where you work the job still needs to be done when an employee is on furlough as does ours as well. However, an agreement is an agreement and the district did not live up to their end of the bargain. How would you feel as an employee if you gave up your hard earned dollar that fed your children and kept a roof over their heads only to find out that your job was done while you were gone and for triple the pay. You can’t tell me that is logical or that you wouldn’t mind it.
Let me remind you that we are not a “right to work” state.
Real numbers…well that would be those that don’t hold projections or “what if’s”. The district likes to “predict” and they also like to hid money…like the 2.5 million that was given to us from the federal government to retain jobs. After the charter schools get their money then Natomas gets 2 million. SCOE told the district to “hold onto” the funds….no…I don’t think so! It should be included in the budget.
Elizabeth I would love to see through the rose colored glasses, but the district has proven mistrust and that is why we all look over these numbers carefully and every time we are given a new budget sheet it is always different and money is not there that should be. Even the SCOE rep said she didn’t trust the numbers.
Well said Scott! I couldn’t agree with you more!