School is out for the summer, but players within the Tahoe-Truckee Unified School have forgone a break.
A final budget was – after much drama – passed in June, but the school board continues with its marathon meetings.
Meanwhile, there are labor disputes and complaints filed and the recall.
All told, the TTUSD crew tends to be a depressing bunch these days. Most of them talk in sighs and resolved nods. The District’s bean counter, Assistant Superintendent, Financial Services, Steve Dickinson, is having a particularly bleak summer.
‘Theoretically,’ Dickinson said, taking in a deep breath before continuing, ‘now my worse-case scenario is going on up to $9 million-plus.’
For the better part of the past year, Dickinson has worked toward carving out nearly $4 million from the District’s overall budget in order to weather the current financial straits. The carving wasn’t clean, there was blood, people are angry and some don’t have jobs anymore.
In June, the board settled on a budget reduced by $3.7 million. Dickinson recalled ‘feeling pretty good’ during this time.
But people in Sacramento were not feeling good. At the state house they were scrambling to figure out California’s $26 billion shortfall. Eventually, basic aid schools were put on the table.
Most of the California’s school districts are primarily funded with money from the state. However, some are lucky enough – such as TTUSD – to have a strong funding source from local property taxes that surpasses what the state would provide. These districts are called basic aid districts, as they receive just ‘basic aid’ from the state.
Until recently, basic aid districts – though required to make cuts – were not feeling the pinch to the degree that other districts were. Talk in Sacramento began to hint at changing that, in an attempt to use the money to ease the state’s $26 billion deficit.
The $9 million figure Dickinson throws out is the scariest scenario possible. He said it won’t happen, although the number cruncher was ‘putting it on my chart.’
‘The worst case scenario?’ he pondered, before dismissing the $9 million possibility. ‘We might as well run to the hills if that happened – that would be devastating.’
Superintendent Steve Jennings is taking a wait-and-see approach.
‘Everything is a guess at this particular point,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to predict what the legislature is going to do.’
In an effort to stave off any overly dramatic reductions, the basic aid districts got together and decided to take preemptive action: before the state could ask for any money, they’d go ahead and hand some over.
In Tahoe-Truckee’s case the offered amount works out to about $2.6 million. Still a lot for a district that struggled all winter and spring to cut slightly more than that amount.
Dickinson, while reluctant to latch on to a number due to feeling ‘slightly burned’ after falsely preaching the $4 million worst-case figure previously handed down from the state, believes legislators will take the bait.
‘They have plenty of bigger fish to fry than that political nightmare – canceling basic aid,’ he figured, adding that such a move would be ‘practically unfathomable.’
Dickinson referred to an additional $2.6 million as ‘close to unfathomable’ and ‘tough to swallow.’
The board will tackle the issue – perhaps with additional direction from the state by that time – during its next budget meeting July 22. Dickinson said the money will most likely come out of reserves.
Jennings said the likely additional cuts do not bode well for any chance of rehiring teachers laid off during the budget process. At one point, district officials had said some employees might be brought back on board once the budget was ironed out.
‘We certainly are on hold insofar as doing any reinstatements right now,’ the Superintendent said.
In addition to dealing with a budget crisis just like every other district in the state, the TTUSD is also reeling from internal problems. The district board and officials are still sweating through labor negotiations with various unions, and the English Learner Advisory Committee of Truckee Elementary recently filed a complaint with the department of education because they claim the District is not providing students the options of being taught in Spanish.
But the most visible problem for the District is the recall. Since the board voted to reconfigure area schools – shaking up lakeside schools and riling a contingent of parents and teachers – a movement has taken hold calling for the recall of the three board members who voted for the reconfiguration.
‘Is it distracting to the work?’ Jennings repeated the question facing him. ‘I think it’s distracting to the entire community.’
Since April, both sides of the recall issue have made their cases at various venues in the area. It’s safe to say that the three board members in question – Kristy Olk, Bev Ducey and Bill Kraus – have equally passionate supporters and detractors.
During a June meeting of the Day Break Club in Truckee, Jennifer Merchant urged community members to reject the notion of a recall. She said such infighting would turn voters off to other education issues, such as Measure A – which could be financially crippling.
‘These folks have done nothing egregious,’ Merchant said, suggesting that any turnover on the board should come about via regular elections.
Supporters of the recall have taken to the streets with their clipboards and petitions. They plead their case to passer-bys. Sometimes the opposition pleads the opposite.
Recently, the debate became a bit heated while both groups were present at the Truckee Regional Park during a Wednesday community gathering. After recall advocates claimed their petition process was being interfered with, police were called and the situation was eventually settled peacefully.
Stan Scott, a recall proponent, was involved in the incident at the park. A few days later he stood manning a table in the breezeway of a Truckee post office. Scott has two children attending Tahoe Lake Elementary, a first and third grader. Under the reconfiguration plan, the older child will attend North Tahoe Middle School next year. He isn’t happy about his child going to school with students ‘with hormones and whiskers.’
‘There’s a question in my mind whether sixth graders are too young to go to middle school. And now you’re talking fourth and fifth graders?’ he said.
Though he is actively involved in the recall effort, the parent has become disillusioned with the official process. During our interview he said he didn’t plan on attending a school board meeting scheduled for later in the evening.
‘I stopped going, it’s a waste of my time,’ Scott said. ‘They don’t listen to us. Why should we go?’
For the past few months school board meetings have been lively affairs. But the July 8 meeting slipped into somewhat of a summertime mellow.
Among the scant public comment, however, was nestled another problem for the District. A volleyball coach, it seems, will be contesting a rehiring decision.
The board members nodded blankly at the news. Perhaps they were saving their energy for another round of budget slashing on July 22.
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