Demand that school budget cuts take place far from students and those who work directly with the children.
By Carolanne Sudderth/Ocean Park Gazette
Last week, the boardroom of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) was jammed to overflowing. Teachers and classified employees filled the aisles and oozed into the halls. With threats of additional cutbacks in Gov. Gray Davis’ budget talk a few hours away, and the possible loss of their jobs swinging over their heads like the sword of Damocles, SMMUSD employees marched on the school board with some demands of their own.
Harry Keiley, president of the Santa Monica-Malibu Classroom Teachers Association (SMMCTA), led the charge. Some 70 certificated employees rose as Keiley began speaking and applauded loudly as he presented a list of SMMCTA-approved recommendations. Cuts should begin at the top and as far away from the students as possible, he read from the list. This not only applies to teachers, but to anyone else who works directly with and gets to know the children individually.
Earlier this month, Gov. Davis announced $34.5 billion deficit in the state budget-$3.4 million of which were cuts to the SMMUSD that had to be made within 90 days. In addition, an anticipated deficit of $5.6 million for the fiscal year 2003/04 had grown to $11 million worth of red ink. Furthering the bleak outlook, on Jan. 10, Davis announced that $5.4 billion in budget cuts would come from California school districts.
The Doubletree Hotel sits on leased school board land, and Santa Monica College holds a long-term lease on the former Madison Elementary School site. Plans for a state-of-the-art theatre on the site have been in the works for more than a year.
As Keiley read from the list at the Jan. 9 board meeting, he said, “It is simply incomprehensible and unjustifiable that a state that has the sixth largest economy in the world is not able to fund its schools. The government labels teachers and children as failures, and yet they fail us.”
Previous suggestions from Superintendent John Deasy’s office had included the layoff of some 60 teachers and 60 classified staff. Keiley suggested that the district start making up the difference by digging into its own pockets: starting with its $2.8 million reserves (3 percent of expenditures the state requires the schools to have on hand), establish a parcel tax and lobby the cities of Santa Monica and Malibu for additional monies and renegotiate leases of district land.
“It’s difficult to accept-nor should we continue to allow-major corporations to benefit from poorly written leases at the expense of the district.”
On the negative side of the ledger, he suggested the following cuts:
- Start at the top and reduce district administration by 10 positions for a savings of $1 million.
- Special education program must be cut by 10 to 15 percent (savings-$750,000 to $1 million). Instead, create a nonpublic charter school that could be partially funded through tuition of $30,000 per year.
- Place a moratorium on all new special services contracts and give work to existing employees rather than farm it out. The account shows some $7 million worth of expenditures to date, Keiley said. “We need to analyze those accounts and the work that can be done in-house.”
- Freeze expenditures.
- Offer early retirement incentives this spring for all employees who are eligible.
Classified staff member Maggie Hanson jumped on the privatization bandwagon claiming that several $24-an-hour computer techs had been laid off while a $50-an-hour special services (contracted) tech was called in to do their job.
“This is clearly causing an erosion of the classified bargaining unit, knowing that a classified employee was laid off and replaced by a special services employee being paid at nearly twice his salary,” Hanson said.
Superintendent Deasy said he had been considering digging into the reserves himself until a wildfire hit the Malibu area Monday, closing down schools and forcing school buses to run blockades to get children home to Santa Monica.
Other suggestions have already been enacted, Deasy said. In a memo released Jan. 6, Deasy announced an immediate freeze on purchasing and hiring. Purchase orders and reimbursement requests will be returned to their schools of origins. “We will follow the lead of Gov. Gray Davis who has placed the same restrictions on all state purchases and state hiring,” he wrote.
Boardmember Julia Brownley asked staff to research the real estate issue and bring back figures. “It’s important for the board to know what the value of the property is,” she said. “I don’t think a report has been made on that since I was on the board.”
The Madison lease allows the district to take back the property if the district’s resident population (permit students don’t count) reaches 25 percent more than enrolled in elementary schools in 1989/90.
“We’re probably closer to the trigger number than most would think,” Deasy said.
Boardmember Mike Jordan added that although he knew the board was not in the business of selling real estate, “I would guess that that property would have to be incredibly expensive [now] considering where it’s located in Santa Monica.
“If [Davis’] report tomorrow is as bad as we all have anticipated, I think that we have to be prepared to lay all our cards on the table.”
Advised that the district might be out to up his lease, Doubletree General Manager Francois Khouri laughed. “The lease already went up,” he said.
“From year to year, there’s a huge increase,” he said. “I have no comments. Good luck to them.”
Tom Donner, Santa Monica College’s executive vice president of business and administration, compared reopening the Madison lease with mandating last minute changes to the teachers’ contract.
“Contracts are entered into so that you have certainty for the future,” Donner said.
Donner warned that if the district did attempt to take back the property, they might find themselves looking at a breach of contract suit, pointing out that the reclamation clause in the lease doesn’t kick in for several decades.
Ultimately, Donner put the blame of the current fiscal crisis squarely on the governor, questioning Davis’ giving a 2 percent Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to school employees in September (just before his reelection) and a few months later, announcing a $30 million deficit and a 3.6 percent across-the-board cut to schools.
“The idea of giving a 2 percent COLA when you know full well the state can’t afford it and then coming back and saying, ‘Oh, I’ll have to cut your budgets now,’ You put the poor local boards in such a terrible position. They didn’t know you were going to come back and say, ‘Hey, we want it back, and we want some more.’ “
“It just doesn’t make a lot of sense.”