It was a cold, black night on the summit. Vehicles filling the Donner Trail Elementary School parking lot yearned to hum themselves to warmth, but it would be hours before those engines were revved for the drive home.
Inside the school’s warmly lit gymnasium, parents, teachers and children were gathered for a school meeting. There was a lot to discuss.
‘Obviously, we’re here because of some budget issues,’ said Steve Jennings, superintendent of the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District. ‘I don’t think it’s a secret.’
This Feb. 2 meeting was but one of many. The District is currently hosting such meetings at each school in order to inform the community about a minimum $3 million shortfall in next year’s budget.
‘We’ve gone to several schools now,’ Jennings told the group, ‘and there’s always an elephant in the room.’
On the other side of the gymnasium, a toddler clad in a rainbow jumper crawls across the floor toward a collection of blue and yellow cross-country ski boots lining the wall. The elephant in this room was that this child would not be able to attend school here.
‘We’re not here to close Donner Trail School,’ Jennings said, in an attempt to quell consistent community chatter.
Shifting gears, the Superintendent mellowed the suspect crowd with humor. He sets the scene: shortly after arriving on the job last year, he attended an open house for Donner Trail.
‘Someone pulled me aside,’ Jennings recalled, ‘and said, ‘don’t come up here and tell us you’re going to close our school. The last superintendent did that and we got rid of him and we’ll get rid of you too.’’
There would be no talk of closing Donner Trail. The purpose of this meeting was to brainstorm, to figure out some possible way to make ends meet. If Donner Trail is ultimately closed another meeting will need to be called for that announcement.
Of course, closing schools is an option. It’s on the table. Everything is.
‘As we embark on this process we want to put everything on the table,’ Jennings had said during a Jan. 14 press conference announcing the shortfall. ‘I think the changes that are possible are endless.’
The announcement, made at Truckee Town Hall, was an awkward affair. Like a doctor informing his patient there would need to be amputations – significant amputations – he just wasn’t sure where or how much.
‘We need to be creative,’ he had told the sparse crowd scattered about the town chambers.
A couple of weeks after the announcement, Jennings sat down in his office and mulled specific possibilities. He had already been to a few school meetings, gotten feedback from the community.
Along with the more dramatic options – such as school closures – a list of possible cuts was beginning to develop. Perhaps students would be charged for transportation to and from school, or open campuses would become closed in an effort to keep kids and their lunch money in the cafeteria.
‘Class size is obviously going to be a major source of discussion,’ Jennings said, although he was unsure just how many students one classroom could contain – ‘we’re calculating, we’re actually in the process of doing some calculations.’
In addition to the school meetings, district staff and administrators are also discussing the financial riddle. Sub-committees have formed, each examining a particular angle, such as toying with the school calendar in an effort to reduce the number of days the buildings are actually up and running.
‘In fact, that’s where I just was,’ Jennings said.
The Supervisor had rushed from the sub-committee meeting to the interview. He seemed almost out of breath, weirdly excited about the possibilities on a bleak horizon. Earlier, during the town hall announcement, he had said he preferred to think of the budget quandary, and ensuing trims, as ‘restructuring’ instead of cutting.
One casualty of the restructuring process will undoubtedly be District employees: teachers, administrators, janitors, bus drivers, etc. A key point stressed in both the town hall press conference and the community school meetings is that 80 percent of the District’s costs are attributed to staffing.
Even as District employees won a salary negotiation victory last year, some will now be turned out into the growing number of unemployed. No one’s sure how many – or who, exactly – will be going.
To be sure though – as it is a term of their employment – the unfortunates will be notified soon. Probably about twice as many will receive notices as will actually be laid off.
‘We need that flexibility,’ said Steve Dickinson, the school district’s Assistant Superintendent, Financial Services.
One reason the District needs such flexibility is that no one is sure exactly how much of a shortfall they are looking at.
Jennings sometimes asterisks the $3 million figure, cautioning that it is a minimum estimation.
The Tahoe Truckee Unified School District is a Basic Aid district. This means it receives a bulk of its funding from local property tax revenues, as opposed to the state cutting a check. Basic Aid works out nice in a boom real estate market, and Tahoe’s was hitting about 10 percent growth for consecutive years.
This year that growth slowed to 7 percent. The school district is clinging hopefully to a 5 percent prediction for next year.
‘I’m a little worried now we may not even reach that 5 percent,’ Jennings confided in his office.
Because the District needs a final budget by June, there isn’t time to flesh out next year’s revenues.
‘We have to get to the point where we have to just stick a fork in it and say, ‘this is what we’re gonna go for,’’ Jennings said.
While the school board will make the final decisions on cuts, the District is making an effort to involve community members in the process. During each of its school meetings, suggestions are taken and notes from the gatherings are posted on ttusd.org.
‘We could turn our back on the stakeholders and say, ‘we’ll be right back,’ and Boom!’ Dickinson told those gathered for a Feb. 3 meeting at the high school in Truckee. ‘That’s one extreme.’
According to Jennings, the meetings have gone well. Turnouts have been decent and the comments helpful. The circumstances, however, are of course uncomfortable.
‘There’s a lot of uncertainty,’ Jennings said. ‘A lot of wondering what’s going to happen.’
Standing in the Truckee High School’s theatre, Jennings and Dickinson worry about the low attendance as the 6 p.m. meeting time dawns. Passing it off on the Tahoe Time-factor, they begin discussing the previous night’s meeting at Donner Trail.
They describe the community’s input as ‘constructive’ and ‘thoughtful.’ The suggestions were ‘outside the box.’ But then, maybe, they’ve got to be outside the box; they’re scrambling to keep a school open.
‘Of course,’ Dickinson concedes, ‘at the top of everyone’s list was ‘don’t close Donner Trail Elementary.’’
By mid-February, Jennings said the information gathering will be coming to a close. Decisions will need to be made quickly.
While non-teaching staff doesn’t require much notice to layoff, teachers will need to be notified about next year by March 15.
Other budget-cutting decisions – school closures, bussing issues – will be made later, in time for a final draft by May.
Hunkered down at his broad office table, Jennings’ glass is perpetually half-full.
‘It’s not about money,’ he said. ‘We can still accomplish what we need to accomplish without money.’
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