Superintendent Tim Cuneo also apologizes for a leaked memo painting three parents as potential ‘saboteurs;’ a position on the district’s financial oversight committee is being reserved for a Malibu representative.
By Knowles Adkisson / The Malibu Times
Three teachers, including one at Malibu High School, will be laid off for the next school year. The decision was made by the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education at its meeting March 3 due to uncertainty about the budget situation for 2011-12.
Superintendent Tim Cuneo had previously recommended laying off six teachers, but reduced the number to three after Point Dume Marine Science Elementary School activists decided not to continue their appeal for charter status to the state board of education. The district is bound by law to notify its staff they could be laid off by March 15, and was preparing in case it had to absorb any teachers from Point Dume in the event it achieved charter status.
The layoffs were made based on seniority. Each of the three teachers is currently in their first or second year of employment with the district. The two other layoffs took place at the elementary school level.
The district is expecting to receive less funding from the state this year, but the size of the cuts will likely not be known until after July 1, when the state is required to produce its budget.
Superintendent Tim Cuneo said at last week’s board meeting that he believed the district could weather cuts up to $350 per student, or about $3.6 million, while retaining current levels of staffing. The district is also expecting a decline in kindergarten enrollment. Cuneo said the three layoff notices could be rescinded depending on the size of decline in kindergarten enrollment.
“I’m holding the three [layoffs] at the present time because I want to carefully watch our kinder[garten] enrollments across the district and hopefully we can reduce [the three layoffs] as well,” Cuneo said.
The district has until May to rescind the layoffs.
Malibu High School Principal Mike Kelly said that although a math teacher was given a layoff notice, the position at the school has not been cut. If the layoffs are upheld, the math teaching position would be filled by a teacher within the district who has more seniority.
“I am hopeful that we’ll have the teacher [who’s being laid off] back next year,” Kelly said, noting the possibility that the layoffs will be rescinded.
Cuneo also publicly apologized for writing a memo to the SMMUSD board in which he labeled three Santa Monica parents as potential “saboteurs” to the district’s efforts to receive its share of Proposition Y and YY money. Cuneo said that he had personally reached out to the three parents to apologize.
The memo was written in late January and leaked to the press, apparently by a member of the board, in late February. Cuneo wrote the board to inform them that the three parents, Tricia Crane, Claudia Landis and Lee Jones, had resigned from the district’s Special Education Program Taskforce. The parents were upset that the taskforce’s efforts to reform special education policies in Santa Monica were not sufficient.
Cuneo wrote in the memo, “The District is about to go into negotiations with the City on an agreement regarding our share of the Proposition Y and YY funds. Based on past experience, I can anticipate that at least one of the three may attempt to sabotage the District’s efforts if they do not get their way.”
Cuneo suggested that Crane would go to Santa Monica City Councilmember Bobby Shriver to influence the negotiations.
That elicited a letter to the editor from Shriver to the Santa Monica Daily Press on March 1 denouncing the memo, and repudiations of the claim from Crane (See story, “Leaked Memo,” page A1).
Also at last week’s meeting, the board reappointed two people to the district’s 11-member Financial Oversight Committee, and appointed three new members. SMMUSD board president Jose Escarce said the committee had requested that the last open slot on the committee be reserved for a candidate from the city of Malibu.
Board member Ralph Mechur said that while “the preference might be for someone from Malibu,” he cautioned that the applicant must still be qualified.
According to the district’s Web site, applicants must possess a “broad perspective of the District,” as well as either financial, management, or legal expertise or experience so that they can understand school district finances. The Financial Oversight Committee is an independent body that monitors district finances.
Also:
– The board received the annual report from the Measure BB Oversight Committee, which monitors how funds from the 2006 bond measure for various facility improvements at district schools are spent. The district currently conducts an internal audit each year, but the committee recommended that the district pay for an additional independent audit in the interest of transparency.
– The board received a report on the district’s program for English language (EL) learners. The report stated that this year SMMUSD did not meet a federal requirement that 56 percent of its EL students be proficient in EL arts and mathematics courses. Should that happen again, SMMUSD would have to develop an improvement plan to ensure it meets the requirement.