How the district was planning to off-set budget shortfalls.

The self-described “Doomsday scenario” laid out by LA Unified’s chief financial officer at Tuesday’s school board meeting could have resulted in the loss of 2,000 teacher and administrator jobs by next spring, an increase of up to nine students per classroom, and a halt to saving for teacher retirement benefits.

But then, like the cavalry coming over the hill, a letter from Sacramento arrived during the meeting and saved the district from the dire budget battle.

“This letter literally just came in as we were presenting this today,” said Megan Reilly, who for years has been pointing out a looming severe deficit. “We will have to have our legal department look at it, but it’s a reprieve of sorts.”

The letter, from State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, said, “Unfortunately, there has been considerable misunderstanding” of a California Department of Education report released May 27 that said LA Unified had not explained how it was funding high-needs students. “Respectfully, the CDE decision does not require LAUSD to identify $1 billion in programmatic cuts.”

The letter adds that “some media reports were not accurate. It was not the finding of the CDE that LAUSD inappropriately expended $450 million or that it ‘shortchanged’ unduplicated students. Instead, CDE reviewed the complaint and concluded that LAUSD did not provide an adequate explanation of how $450 million in special education funds met the proportional spending requirements for services for unduplicated students in Local Control and Accountability Plans.”

The district receives extra money for foster youth, low-income students and English learners and has to show how the money is being used for those students.

Monica Ratliff and Richard Vladovic at the school board.

Torlakson wrote that it appears that LA Unified could justify the $450 million and “minimize disruption to its budget.” So the state won’t require any “significant spending adjustment” until the 2017-2018 school year, after which the worst predictions of deficits are expected to start.

LA Unified officials disputed the findings from the beginning and still plan to appeal the decision, but it threatened to overturn the budget planned for next year, which has to be voted on by July 1. The district came up with various scenarios for the school board members, and the board will make a final decision on June 21, but the situation seems far less severe.

“I want to remind everyone we will not vote today,” said school board President Steve Zimmer.

Reilly detailed “Draconian cuts” that would have had to take place in the proposed budget, including reducing the numbers of bus drivers, police officers and custodians as well as teaching staff. Even with those cuts, if the district had to change its funding for high-needs students, it would have resulted in a $500 million deficit, she said.

The district is facing financial troubles based on a continuing enrollment loss and increasing costs in retirement benefits. Next year, the district expects a decline of 13,728 traditional and affiliated charter students, while independent charter enrollment will increase by about 5,984. For 2017-2018 the district budget projects an additional enrollment decline of 13,087 students in the district’s traditional and affiliated charter schools and 12,169 fewer in 2018-2019, while independent charter enrollment is projected to increase by 5,492 in 2017-2018 and 3,486 in 2018-2019.

Meanwhile, the district must set aside money to pay for current retiree health benefits, which Reilly estimates at $13 billion.

Board member Monica Ratliff expressed concern that the district not take away from  money that is set aside to go to pensions and benefits that were promised to employees.

Reilly agreed and said, “It is as if you put aside money for your child’s college fund. You don’t want to take it away if you want your child to go to college.”

Meanwhile, Ratliff praised Superintendent Michelle King and her staff for already cutting 30 percent of their office staff, saying, “You’ve already implemented office reduction and you already cut a significant amount of money, it’s not easy and I appreciate that.”

King admitted some challenges remain ahead, and pointed out that they are still pushing for adequate funding from the state for their programs.

Board member Monica Garcia said, “I want to point out that this letter says that some media reports were inaccurate. It’s important for me that the public knows that our interest was to ensure that we are maximizing the dollars and maximizing the outcome.”

In the proposed final budget presented to the board, there’s a $183 million ending balance from this past year that will be used to balance the budget. The district still expects a balanced budget through 2018, but notes a potential deficit for 2018-2019.

Reilly explained that the district doesn’t receive enough money from the state or federal governments to handle special education students, and that part of their budget realignment strategy will continue to target schools with the most needs. So, instead of offering the same amount per program per school, the district may have to offer more to a school that shows that its population needs more of those services.

She used arts as an example. The district found that certain neighborhoods of poverty had less exposure to arts and so that gave more weight to those schools for grants. They will distribute the money to where it’s needed most.

In one of the Consent Agenda items passed by the full board Tuesday, the board agreed to process “temporary borrowings” recommended by Reilly. “Temporary borrowings are made in situations where the district advances cash from a fund with sufficient cash balance to pay obligations from a fund with insufficient cash balance,” Reilly said. The money is paid back within the legal time period, she added.

Sara Mooney of United Way

Most of the temporary borrowing, a total of nearly $175 million, was used for the Cafeteria fund, and all was replaced; $82 million was borrowed from the County School Facilities fund for Measure Q and all was repaid, and $36.8 million was borrowed from the general fund for the children’s services fund and all but $9 million was repaid to date, she said.

Among the nearly three dozen people speaking about the budget Tuesday were a few students who asked that more money be spent on classes rather than police.

“I would rather the $60 million for school police be reduced and spent on restorative justice programs,” said Laura Gutierrez from Roosevelt High School.

Sara Mooney from the United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the Communities for Los Angeles Student Success coalition detailed their report showing concerns about the fair distribution of funds to high-needs students. She presented their report card for the Local Control Funding Formula and said, “Our concern is that there’s a gap, and our first recommendation is for equity.”

The school board is set to meet next Tuesday afternoon to hear the final budget, and a new assessment after the Torlakson letter, and make a final vote on the budget.

So far, people who have attended the meetings, including some school board members and community education groups, say they are disappointed in the turnout.

Among all 1,436,149 potential people who might care about who gets picked as the next superintendent — adding up the number of district students, employees and at least one parent or guardian for each student — only 900 people turned out for any of the community meetings last week and 4,000 took the district’s online survey.

Zimmer might have a better chance tomorrow to encounter someone with 11 fingers than someone who voiced an opinion.

“I want to emphasize how important it is for everyone to feel like they can weigh in on this decision, and we will take it very seriously,” Zimmer said this week after extending the survey and the campaign called “Your Voice Counts” until Nov. 1.

Some observers have expressed disappointment with the turnout. Sara Mooney of the United Way LA, who has pushed for community education groups to be more involved in the decision, said she attended three community forums with only a handful of people attending. “I’m also not a fan of the way the forums are being conducted, or the way they collect the data,” Mooney said. “It is clear that they don’t want the public involved.”

“That is simply not true,” according to Hank Gmitro, the president of the search firm Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates who is in charge of finding candidates. “Now, we will be compiling what was being said at all the forums we have held, and gathering information in the surveys, and we will present it to the board.”

Gmitro, who led many of the forums himself, said he has had “robust conversations and input” at all the public meetings. The largest group attending was those of principals, where about 110 people showed up.

The comments, surveys and feedback will be divided up and aggregated in multiple ways, Gmitro said, enabling school board members to learn what people said by ethnic background and district; and whether respondents were teachers, administrators, students, staff or parents. Private interviews were conducted with local business leaders and politicians, unions involved with the district and student groups. The level of participation is about normal, according to the search team.

“This is about the same as we have seen when doing searches in other districts,” Gmitro said.

While some of the board members expressed disappointment in the public input attendance, they turned down two proposals to open up the search process.

“We need to do everything we can do to get everyone to fill out those surveys and assure the public that we will hear everyone’s voice,” board member Ref Rodriguez said.

George McKenna pointed out that he was disappointed that only 10 percent of the voters in his district even bothered to show up to vote for him. “Does that mean that 90 percent doesn’t care?” he saids. “I don’t think so, but I’m sure that all these board members are unified in wanting to find the best person possible for the job.”

Click here to sign up for the LA School Report newsletter, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Before noon, the board out front reads 112 degrees.

As a heat wave engulfed the region yesterday, LA Unified officials fielded 346 calls to fix air conditioning units. By the end of today, they were expecting at least that many more.

Tacked on to an existing backlog of calls for air conditioner repair since before school began, LA Unified has about 2,600 requests for air conditioning repairs during the current triple-digit heat wave.

“We have a handle on it, we are responding as quickly as we can,” Mark Cho, Deputy Director of Maintenance and Operations at LAUSD told LA School Report. He said the team of more than 80 maintenance worker is completing about 160 repairs a day during this heat spell, in which temperatures are as much as 15 degrees hotter than normal. Yesterday alone, workers repaired 164 air conditioning units throughout the district.

LAUSD has set aside $1 billion for a Critical Repair Fund and over the past three years, about $300 million has been used for air conditioners, Cho said.

An estimated 30,000 LAUSD classrooms and more than 1,000 other public spaces, such as hallways, locker rooms and libraries, use about 68,000 air control venting devices throughout the district, Cho said, but the problem is that most of the units are more than 30 years old. The district cannot always find compressors or parts on units that are no longer manufactured.

“That kind of thing slows us down a bit, but we are working around it,” Cho said. In worse case scenarios, the classrooms are equipped with temporary air conditioner units, or the classes are moved into air conditioned multi-purpose rooms, he added.

For the next few days, all students will remain indoors even during breaks. At noon, for example, the usually bustling school yard and playground at Allesandro Elementary School in Los Feliz was empty during lunchtime. The electronic sign in the front of the school showed that the temperature hit 112 degrees.

Meanwhile, Cho is gearing up for the next wave of repairs that will happen during the expected torrential rains predicted in the upcoming El Niño.

“Next will be the rains, and roof repairs,” he said.

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl

The Los Angeles teachers union, UTLA, attacked a proposed expansion of charter schools in LA Unified with a robo-call to district teachers from union president Alex Caputo-Pearl, vowing to fight the education reform foundations behind the effort.

Mentioning Eli Broad by name in the call, Caputo-Pearl told the teachers that these groups, which include the Broad, Keck and Walton Family foundations, are “out to destroy collective bargaining” and that UTLA will “push back against the billionaires’ plan.”

Then, Caputo-Pearl encouraged everyone to have a good new school year and said, “You will be hearing a lot more of the UTLA Strategic Plan.”

A recording of the call was made available to LA School Report. The union declined any further comment, as Suzanne Spurgeon, the union spokeswoman, said Caputo-Pearl’s beginning-of-the-school-year welcome address was intended only for the membership, not the public.

LAUSD school board member Bennett Kayser

The debating season kicks off tomorrow night with the first of several scheduled candidate forums for those running in the three contested LA United board districts.

But it’s starting with a buzzkill.

After committing to appear, board member Bennett Kayser has withdrawn from the first of the District 5 debates, scheduled at the Goodwill Community Enrichment Center in northeast LA. His campaign told organizers that a “scheduling conflict” would preclude him from appearing in that debate and another, on Feb. 10 at the Oldtimers Foundation Family Center in Huntington Park.

Both events are sponsored by United Way-LA, which is also staging forums for candidates in the District 3 and District 7 races.

“We believe the constituents in District 5 deserve to hear from all candidates,” Elmer Roldan, a United Way official, told LA School Report. “These forums are designed to give all candidates the opportunity to answer questions from the community and to demonstrate they’re the better candidate running. He and his campaign have a responsibility to prove to communities that he can lead this district.”

Roldan confirmed that Kayser’s two challengers — Ref Rodriguez and Andrew Thomas —  would still appear in the two United Way debates, and so would all six contenders in the District 3 event and all three in a District 7 event. Tamar Galatzan is running for reelection in 3 and board President Richard Vladovic is defending his seat in 7.

Sarah Bradshaw, Kayser’s chief of staff, confirmed that Kayser intends to participate in three other debates for the District 5 candidates, all of them in February.

Elizabeth Badger

This is the next in a series of profiles on candidates running in the March 3 primary for the LA Unified school board. Today’s focus is Elizabeth Badger, a candidate for the District 3 seat.

For Elizabeth Badger the race for LA Unified’s School Board District 3 seat is personal.

“I’m angry and fed up and I want to do something about it,” she told LA School Report, explaining what pushed her into the crowded race to represent most of the San Fernando Valley.

Badger’s two youngest children — a son in 8th grade and a daughter in 5th — were both diagnosed with autism and ADHD, and they require special education. But getting them the right classes with the right kind of support was a Sisyphean process, she says.

It began with her oldest. “I wanted to keep my son in a traditional public school so I had to learn the system completely on my own to advocate for him because he was being treated so badly where he was,” she said. After years of struggle, he’s now “blossomed” with a 3.75 grade point average that delights Badger to no end.

But it was a long slog, and it wasn’t cheap, she said. She ended up suing the district twice.

“I just don’t think parents should have to fight that hard,” she said.

Badger is now taking the fight into District 3, the most widely-contested of the four seats with elections this year. Tamar Galatzan is the incumbent, and Badger is one of five challengers.

This is Badger’s third run at a public office in less than two years. In April 2013, he finished fourth in a field of six for a City Council seat, winning 9.3 percent of the vote. Five months later, she placed seventh in a field of 11 in a special election for a California assembly seat, with 2.8 percent of the vote.

In this race, Galatzan has been endorsed by education reform advocates with deep pockets while Badger remains largely self-financed as she scrambles for campaign support. Most of the $12,000 she has raised has come through personal loans. And an endorsements by the teachers union, UTLA, or SEIU Local 99, which represents about 30,000 LA Unified employees, are unlikely.

Although she’s not familiar with the specific terms currently under negotiation between the district and the teachers union, Badger said she supports a substantial raise for teachers, effective immediately, saying “they’ve sacrificed a lot for our kids.” As the CEO and founder of the Minority Outreach Committee, a non-profit community group that hosts panels on economic development in the San Fernando Valley, she argues that she would be an asset in the negotiations.

Badger is relying on voters who are disappointed in Galatzan, especially those who are upset over the district’s controversial one-to-one iPad program, which Galatzan supported.

“There are a lot of people in the Valley who are mad about that waste of money,” she said, adding a prediction that they are not likely to re-elect Galatzan after the public debacle.

“I just need them to think of me,” she said.

Retiring LAUSD employee Linda Perez with board members Bennet Kayser (L) and Richard Vladovic.

The LA Unified school board honored two people at its meeting Tuesday as retiring 20-year employee Linda Perez received a certificate of appreciation and late board member Marguerite LaMotte was remembered with a moment of silence.

LaMotte was a long-serving member of the board when she passed away on Dec. 5, 2013 at the age of 80. On the year anniversary of her death, the district named a school in her honor, the Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte Elementary School at 4410 Orchard Ave. in south LA.

Before a moment of silence, each member of the board offered words of remembrance of LaMotte. (Click on the below video links to see portions of the meeting when LaMotte and Perez were honored.)

“I’m probably more personally involved with Marguerite than most, although I didn’t sit on the board with her. We were colleagues in many endeavors and friends,” said George McKenna, who won LaMotte’s vacant seat in a special election earlier this year.

Superintendent Ramon Cortines described the ribbon cutting ceremony of the school named for her and said he could feel her presence there.

“She was so focused on the importance of schools and children, and opportunities for children, and this ribbon cutting ceremony was just beautiful,” Cortines said.

Monica Garcia recalled how LaMotte was always friendly despite their often being on opposing sides of issues.

“When I think about Miss LaMotte, I think about the compassion she showed me,” Garcia said. “When I first got elected, and it was a turbulent time, she was the only board member who came out and wished me well. She brought me flowers and a smile and a hug, and I appreciated that.”

Steve Zimmer lightened the mood a bit with a story that captured what many say about LaMotte, that she was a kind and caring person to all those around her.

“I wore a tie today that she bought me,” Zimmer said. “She said, ‘Zimmer I’m going to need to buy you some ties because yours are looking very raggedy these days.'”

The board also honored Perez as President Richard Vladovic and Bennett Kayser presented her with a certificate of appreciation. Perez worked as a secretary in the special education division and also served as president of the California School Employee Association, LA Chapter 500.

A number of board members expressed gratitude to Perez, including McKenna, who said, “You were a visionary. Tenacious. Sometimes stubborn, which I love. I hope you enjoy your retirement.”

Perez also addressed the board, saying, “My passion for my union, my commitment has been very strong. And I’m stubborn, yeah. You know, sometimes you have to be to get what you want, what you need, what your members need more than anything.”

As the meeting concluded, Vladovic played a song by singer Etta James in honor of LaMotte. He said it was one of her favorite songs, in particular because James was a graduate of Jefferson High School, which was in LaMotte’s district.

After a random draw of letters, the ballot order is now set for how candidate names will appear. Here’s the way they will be listed:

District 1

George McKenna, incumbent

(No one else qualified)

District 3

Carl Petersen

Ankur Patel

Scott Schmerelson

Filiberto Gonzalez

Tamar Galatzan, incumbent

Elizabeth Badger Bartels

District 5

Ref Rodriguez

Bennett Kayser, incumbent

Andrew Thomas

District 7

Lydia Gutierez

Euna Anderson

Richard Vladovic, incumbent

How helpful is being listed first? It’s a question that political scientists have studied for years. Here’s the money quote from “On the Causes and Consequences of Ballot Order Effects” — a recent paper by Marc Meredith of the University of Pennsylvania and Yuval Salant of Northwestern:

“We find that candidates listed first on the ballot are between four and five percentage
points more likely to win office than expected absent order effects.”

Theirs is a highly-academic treatise on the subject that takes into account things like ap,j = αp,t(j) + Incp,jλt(j) + εp,j where αp,t(j) = δp,t(j) + Incp,jγp,t(j) + Xjβp,t(j) .

But in an LA Unified school board race, the more likely influences are incumbency, financial support and turnout.

* In an earlier version several names were mistakenly reversed. This version correct that.

LAUSD board member George McKenna at Tuesday’s board meeting

“Forty years ago we were in competition with private schools. Now, we’re in competition with charters.”

That was LA Unified board vice president Steve Zimmer yesterday, speaking at a board committee meeting where the issue at hand was district enrollment. The number of kids attending the district’s traditional schools has been declining since 2003, now hovering around 650,000, from a high of about 750,000, according to a presentation to the committee.

The dip reflects, in part, a slowing birthrate in the district that began in 1996 and is projected to increase only slightly over the next few years or so.

But the rise of independent charters is an unmistakable factor, as well: Data from the California Charter Schools Associations shows that the number of independent charters within LA Unified rose to 206 this year from 132 in 2009.

And more are on the way. KIPP, for example, has opened two of nine planned for the district.

The impact of charters on LA Unified is something of an evergreen debate among board members, faced with the district’s losing revenue for every child who forsakes a traditional district school for a charter. It’s a trend with heavy ripples, as lower enrollment leads to fewer dollars, fewer dollars lead to flat wages, flat wages lead to fewer and angry teachers, and angry teachers are now talking about a strike.

But this week, the discussion of charter impact took on a slightly different tone, as board members at their meeting on Tuesday and again yesterday turned introspective, questioning themselves over how to mitigate some of the enrollment trends.

Instead of blaming charters for siphoning off children whose parents want and can contribute for better educational outcomes — a usual and not incorrect assertion — several members pressed the board to do more to make LA Unified school competitive with them.

George McKenna was especially assertive on the issue, describing the district as the elephant that’s being “eaten one bite at a time, and we’re being eaten alive.”

“We may not be to blame, but we are responsible,” he said at one point. “Somebody’s got to fix this. If not us, then who?”

Superintendent Ramon Cortines took it a step further: “Our people are going to have to become more competitive,” he said, adding that the solutions “are not going to come from here; they’ve got to come from out there.”

The problem, of course, is what to do.

As McKenna reminded the board, state laws require the district to approve and renew charter applications unless something is obviously wrong with the requests. This week, for example, 15 charters came before the board for approvals. Only one was denied.

McKenna suggested one possibility, that the district hire professional fundraisers to entice wealthy Angelinos to keep the district in mind when making donations.

“I don’t know how small, independent entities can overcome a behemoth like LA Unified if we put our resources to it,” he said.

More likely, board members will have to find their answers elsewhere, including the usual spectrum of curricula, quality instruction, modernized buildings, upgraded technology — in short, all the usual issues that members wrangle over during the course of just about every meeting.

This week, though, for some inexplicable reason, the issue of enrollment decline seemed to take on a new urgency, as if a critical mass had been reached a point demanding new strategies to staunch the bleeding.

Beyond Cortines’s expressing frustrations over some charters’ unwillingness to share “best practices,” board members refrained from criticizing charters for acting in bad faith. To the contrary, they applauded them for providing options that deliver quality education, with Zimmer, for one, defending the “sanctity of family choice.”

At the same time, he said, it’s imperative for the district to take action to give parents the same options within LA Unified as they’re finding outside.

“We have no choice,” he said, “but to address that choice.”

UPDATED*

LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines has corrected a statement he made at Tuesday’s board meeting, telling the members in an email that he erred in saying charter schools receive more in state funding than traditional public schools.

“One of the problems is the funding of charters versus regular schools. And the charters in the state get more money than the regular schools do,” he told the board. (Click on the above video to view his comments on charter funding.}

Board member Tamar Galatzan was not present during the discussion, but no other member challenged him. Monica Ratliff and George McKenna seemed to agree with him.

“He’s telling us the truth,” McKenna said. Ratliff added, “We need to discuss the impact of having different rules and different funding for traditional public schools versus our public charters.”

But Cortines took the comments back yesterday. In his email — a copy of which he sent to LA School Report  — he said: “After reflecting on statements I made last night concerning funding for charter schools and regular schools and speaking with staff to obtain clarification, it was made very clear to me that the law has changed since I last served as Superintendent. Charters do not appear to receive more funding than regular schools. Under the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), charters and regular schools are treated equally.”

He also asked for “budget staff to prepare a brief Informative to clear up this matter.”

Cortines served as interim superintendent for LA Unified for about six months in 2000, and as superintendent from 2009 to 2011. In October, he was named interim superintendent after the resignation of John Deasy.

It’s not clear, however, that any laws have changed since his previous years of service.

Some recent studies on the subject concluded that independent charter schools had been receiving less money, not more. A 2012 study by the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office and 2010 study by Ball State concluded that California charters got fewer dollars per pupil than traditional public schools.

Once the Local Control Funding Formula was enacted, it was heralded by charter movement leaders for leveling the funding playing field.

“Instead of being seen and treated as second-class citizens with separate funding streams constantly at risk of reduction or elimination, charter schools will now be funded in the same way that traditional public schools are funded,” California Charter Schools Association chief executive Jed Wallace wrote in a message to charter school operators, according to Ed Source.

The discussion that led to Cortines’ comments at the board meeting was the approval of a new independent KIPP charter school, which spawned a wider discussion on the financial impact independent charter growth may be having on the district, in particular a recent report from Moody’s Investor Service that concluded that the coming expansion of KIPP charter schools in LA Unified was a credit negative, as it will result in a loss of $35 million to the district.

*UPDATED to clarify research showing independent charter schools receive less money

Tamar Galatzan at Tuesday’s LAUSD school board meeting

One of the more contentious moments at yesterday’s LA Unified board meeting was a debate over a resolution to “Promote Healthy Relationships and Prevent Teen Dating Violence”

No one disagreed with the intent or with asking Superintendent Ramon Cortines to deliver a report to the board early next year on how to implement such a program.

Rather, the fight arose over the projected cost: as much as $3.5 million to cover such needs as curriculum specialists, pamphlets, brochures and experts to run a pilot program.

As it appeared before the board, the item was sponsored by Tamar Galatzan and Steve Zimmer, but Galatzan on Monday asked that her name be dropped when the cost became apparent. (It wasn’t.) She was objecting to “budgeting by resolution,” a view she strongly expressed at the board meeting before suggesting that the district seek other funding sources for the program.

Once the funding was stripped out through an amendment that passed 6-1, with Zimmer as the lone dissent, the measure passed unanimously.

The big loser? Peace Over Violence, a community group that works in schools to teach civil resolution, was listed as a potential contractor, for $550,000.

Ramon Cortines at Tuesday’s LA Unified school board meeting

The LA Unified school board got a first look at the district’s financial future, and what members saw wasn’t pretty. Yet, it wasn’t ugly enough to stop the board from approving millions of dollars in new expenditures.

Like a town crier, Superintendent Ramon Cortines has been warning anyone willing to listen that the district is on the verge of a $300 million deficit by the 2015-16 school year. But during the eight-hour meeting yesterday, district Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly reported it’s getting even more bleak:  “We’re facing a $784.5 million deficit by 2016-17,” she told the board.

A large portion of the first shortfall — $81 million —  is due to the expiration of the state’s Quality Education Investment Act (QEIA) grants at the end of the year. The program has helped some of the district’s lowest performing schools shrink class size and hire additional teaching staff as a way to raise test scores. Although some schools are eligible to carry over a portion of this year’s cash into next, providing a temporary bandaid, Cortines said it’s hopeless to attempt to persuade the state to keep the tap open.

“That’s the reason I caution you about additional spending,” Cortines told the board. “Because we will just have to deal with that, and it means that I’m going to have to cut, consolidate or eliminate programs.”

Other factors according to Reilly: Exponential mounting contributions to employee pension funds are hurtling the district deeper into negative territory; higher than expected state revenues this year are leading to a 10 percent decrease in additional Local Control Funding Formula resources for next year.

But the biggest wallop to future budgets comes from the district’s declining enrollment problem. Reilly says the district has been steadily losing about 15,000 students a year, about 3 percent of the current total enrollment.

“When that happens the estimated drop in revenue is about $100 million,” she said, adding that the downward slide is expected to last another two years.

The loss of students and the federal dollars that go along with them is due to a combination of lower birthrates and the exodus of students from traditional public schools to the district’s 250 charter schools.

Ironically, the sobering discussion on the financial threat charter schools present to the district was preceded by approvals for 14 of 15 charter schools, a typical rate for a board meeting. The seven members routinely green-light most of the charter applications and renewals that come before them.

The contradiction was not lost on board member Bennett Kayser, whose animus toward charter schools came into full view when he asked, “Why are we losing money? Because of birthrates and charter schools. How many charters did we authorize today? They’re taking away significant revenues to fund small charter systems or to fund corporate systems who are out for money and real estate instead of helping kids.”

Steve Zimmer waited to air his frustrations before a vote that ultimately approved another charter for the highly successful KIPP chain of charters.

“Given KIPP’s external funding contributions it is very, very, very hard for us to compete. We can’t compete,” he said.

George McKenna suggested one way to compete would be for the district to bring in professional fundraisers to tap wealthy Los Angeles residents to pitch in and help.

“We’re being eaten alive,” he said.

The hand-wringing over declining revenue did not stop the board from approving two big ticket items, more money for the student data tracking system known as MiSiS and for wireless devices.

Without much discussion, the board unanimously consented to spend another $13 million in bond construction funds to buy testing devices for the Smarter Balanced Assessment in the spring. The plan is to combine this sum with another $9.2 million left over from last year’s round of purchases, to buy approximately 29,000 iPads and Chromebooks. The devices are scheduled for delivery in February.

Similarly, not a single board member raised a question about Cortines’s request for $12.1 million to carry the plagued MiSiS software through the end of January, accepting that the “approval of the proposed action will provide additional funding needed for efforts to stabilize MiSiS.”

It was a stark contrast from previous demonstrations by school board members of disbelief, disgust, and almost apoplectic shock at the student data system’s colossal failure expressed in recent months.

Even Cortines’s statement, “I still believe it will take a year to resolve the issues with MiSiS,” failed to get a rise out of any of the board members. Though, perhaps they were assuaged when he added, “We are beginning to see evidence the system is stabilizing.”

The additional spending on MiSiS puts the total tab at $45.5 million to date. Matt Hill, who has overseen the implementation of MiSiS from the start, said that could go up to $86 million by the end of the year.

There were some areas where the board showed some restraint: A resolution that would have committed $3.5 million to “Promote Healthy Relationships and Prevent Teen Dating Violence” passed but was stripped of funding.

The same tactic was taken with Ratliff’s resolution aimed at increasing school safety by boosting staffing levels. While it started out calling for the district to staff every classroom with at least two adults, that part was gutted from the final version that was approved.

Topics on the agenda include a request from the district for $11 million to help fix MiSiS, two resolutions to improve school safety, and board member Steve Zimmer’s “Good Food” measure.

Click here to learn more about the issues the board will be voting on and discussing.

(Credit: LASPD Facebook page)

* UPDATED

There’s another LA Unified School Board meeting tomorrow, which means there’s another round of requests for boat loads of money.

The board will consider a a $12.1 million MiSiS bailout to pay for overtime costs, additional training and staffing, third party oversight and general customer support. The money will be siphoned from bond construction funds and it won’t be the last. Superintendent Ramon Cortines expects to go back before the Bond Oversight Committee in February to ask for additional funding.

If approved, that will bring this year’s total spending on MiSiS to nearly $39 million, not including the $13.5 million it cost to develop the faulty software in the first place.

Board Member Monica Ratliff is proposing two resolutions to improve school safety by boosting the presence of adults on campus. One seeks to raise the number of grown-ups per classroom to “at least two” to keep predatory adults from abusing children. Ratliff proposes the district conduct a study of cost for such an endeavor by the next school board meeting in January.

The resolution calls for an accounting of how much the district has spent on “litigation, settlements, and awards,” a suggestion of how to pay for the additional personnel if the district can cut down on legal costs, such as  the $139 million record settlement for victims of the Miramonte Elementary School child abuse case.

The more controversial of Ratliff’s proposals perhaps is an attempt to increase school police on campus in an effort to reduce crimes that occur within school hours. Several community group leaders spoke out against the measure when it first came up for consideration at last month’s meeting.

Manuel Criollo, head of Community Rights Campaign, an organization that advocates to reduce punitive measures within schools, argued that heavier police presence on campus often leads to unfair targeting of minority students and the so-called “school to prison pipeline.”

“We know that restorative justice programs are better for students,” he told LA School Report. “That’s what we should be investing in. Not more police.”

If passed, the resolution would seeking to pay for the effort through similar sources as the other resolution. It requires Superintendent Ramon Cortines to collect data “that presents annual expenses over the last five years for litigation, awards, settlements and other costs arising out of criminal actions that occurred on school campuses during school hours” and report back to the board next month.

Board Member Steve Zimmer’s “Good Food” measure is also up for a vote. If adopted the new purchasing guidelines would “support a regional food system that is ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially responsible.”

The district spends upwards of $120 million a year on feeding students but the board only renews food procurement contracts every five years.

“Of all the issues that I’ve brought to the board, this is in the top five,” Zimmer told LA School Report shortly before the resolution was introduced last month.

He continued, “It’s probably the first time that we will, with meaningful implications, say that we are going to hold ourselves to the highest standards for the ethical treatment of the people who work on the food chain from beginning to end, the humane treatment of animals, and the extent of the stomping of the environment that we do as a result of serving this many meals every day.”

Finally, 16 charter school approvals and renewals are coming before the board. Of those, the Charter School Division is recommending the denial of two: Digital Renaissance Charter Middle School and Goethe International Charter Middle School.

*Corrects the amount requested for MiSiS funding.

The Los Angeles Unified School District board unanimously approved a $1.1 million plan Tuesday to resolve class-scheduling issues at Jefferson High School in south L.A.

The issues have hundreds of seniors worried they may not graduate on time. The issues have hundreds of seniors worried they may not graduate on time. According to court documents, at least 48 seniors at the school are unable to attend classes they need in order to graduate.

Also, 204 juniors and seniors are assigned to classes they’ve already passed. The students say they have far too much free time on their hands. Some students claim they sit in the auditorium, assigned to so-called courses where there is no teacher. Others are being sent home to study.

The district and the state say they don’t have the money to take care of this issue. So, it is being taken up in superior court in Alameda County, where a judge ordered the state to fix the problem. That’s where the $1.1 million deal comes in to play.

With that money, the LAUSD board wants to extend the school day at Jefferson High School 30 minutes for 124 days so students can make up the learning time they lost. They also want to add classes and funding to support students and add student transportation services to the school.

They’re going to look into next semester’s curriculum to make sure this doesn’t happen again and also look into the issue of overcrowded classrooms at the school.

Nothing is more urgent than what happens to Superintendent John Deasy, whose tenure has come into question over a myriad of issues, including the district’s iPad program, relations with the teachers union, UTLA, and problems the new student-tracking system, MiSiS, which his critics blame for the mess at Jefferson.

Even with Deasy visiting South Korea through the end of the week, the board will resume a closed-door discussion on his future, following a session last week in which the members discussed the parameters of his annual performance review, scheduled for Oct. 21.

Board members later acknowledged that they discussed offering Deasy an exit package to leave before the end of his contract in June 2016. Lawyers began negotiations but through last week, no deal was in place.

The board is also free to fire Deasy at any time, but that is not considered a likely scenario at the moment.

“Frankly, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” said one official close to the situation.

Alongside the uncertainties involving Deasy are the negotiations between the district and the teachers union for a new contract. The board will get an update tomorrow, but there’s not much to update, with the union now asking for even more in salary raises, 10 percent a year, then it did in its opening salvo, 8.8 percent. The district has responded by telling the union such a high demand would push the district budget deficit well past $1 billion.

And now Jefferson High School has entered the list of emergency issues with a state Superior Court judge in Alameda, George Hernandez, ordering the district to fix an array of scheduling problems that have left many students without proper classes and educational time since the school year began, following the launch of district’s new student data software, MiSiS.

The judge also told Deasy to identify the resources needed to fix the problems and develop a remediation plan to present at the board meeting. A task force is expected to explain to the board tomorrow how to resolve remaining issues.

Two other MiSiS related issues are coming before the board: The first is another update from the Information Technology Division on how it’s handling widespread software problems. There’s little doubt it will involve more apologies about the system’s failures, especially in light of Judge Hernandez’s order. Second, the board will vote on a resolution to spend $3.6 million on buying more than 3,300 desktop computers for staff members at schools who use MiSiS on a regular basis.

Ron Chandler, the district’s Chief Information Officer, has said school computers at most campuses are too old to run MiSiS programs, a problem his office did not consider when developing the software.

Board member Tamar Galatzan’s proposal to lower the threshold for federal Title I funding is back. The original measure, which sought to bring Title I dollars to any school in which 40 percent of students or more are from low-income families, failed in a 3 to 3 vote last November.

This latest version by Galatzan calls for Deasy to commission an analysis of previous years’ Title I surplus revenue and how it was spent. Apparently, the district historically has a multimillion-dollar carryover of Title I revenue. Galatzan’s plan is to use any surplus to fund schools with Title I enrollments of 40-40.9 percent, beginning with the 2015-16 school year.

The Title I cutoff was raised to 50 percent after federal education dollars were reduced by nine percent in 2011.

Galatzan has teamed up with Bennett Kayser and Monica Ratliff to commission another study about the implications of deleting emails in a short period of time, including the possibility they may be needed for litigation or to fulfill Public Records Act requests. The three, who are rarely on the same side of issues, have banded together to have a task force in place by the end of the month to review the district’s Records Retention and Destruction Policy and report back with recommendations in January.

Ratliff and Kayser are calling for the district to declassify all reports from the Inspector General’s office related to the procurement of iPads purchased for the district’s one-to-one program. Ratliff is also pushing to make it easier to report fraud to the Inspector General by making a “Hotline” button on the district’s homepage easier to access.

The board will also consider a previously tabled vote that would require charter management organizations to notify parents when their children’s school is in jeopardy of losing the charter. The measure, originally proposed by Galatzan, has been modified and now includes Kayser and George McKenna as co-sponsors.

But it has been amended so that it also requires charter schools to inform parents of a range of other changes and actions involving such subjects as play space, teacher credential status, staff pay scale, instruction materials, special education services, curriculum content, food service and caloric content.

By rules in place since 2002, members have the discretion to spend the money on a project-by-project basis so long as the allocation falls within the guidelines of the bond measure from which it comes.

According to documents obtained by LA School Report, more than $15,517,000 in these priority funds have been spent or are scheduled to be spent since 2010.

The priority funds are bit of an oddity, in that they can be spent all at once on one project or spread out over years. The district and superintendent have no direct say in how the money is spent, and unlike other bond expenditures, the discretionary spends are rarely, if ever, debated by the school board: They are simply approved through unanimous consent in an implicit I’m-OK-with-your-projects-if-you’re-OK-with mine arrangement.

There have been four bond measures dating back to 2002 that have been dedicated to raising money to go toward construction and facility upgrades at LA Unified, starting with Measure K. The lion’s share of the funds are spent by carefully-drawn master plans by the superintendent and his staff – such as the Common Core Technology Project – which then come before the School Construction Bond Citizen’s Oversight Committee for non-binding approval, then the school board, for final and binding approval.

But the priority funds take district officials and the superintendent out of the process entirely.

“Included in [Measure K] was a number of specific pots of money for specific types of projects. In recognition that there would be some things that didn’t quite fit into a category but were important, we had what was known as the ‘balancing pot,’ ” said Tom Rubin, a consultant to the bond oversight committee (BOC). “So the question was ‘OK, how do we allocate the money in the balancing pot?’ Frankly, it was difficult to come up with an answer, so what the board members came up with was, ‘Let’s determine each of this ourselves,’ so we wound up with board member priority funds.”

The funds are not divided equally per district but are distributed based on the number of students in the board member’s district. Expenditures from priority funds range drastically, from $4.8 million for a new auditorium at Eagle Rock High School to run-of-the mill items like $1,120 for a precast granite podium at Marina del Rey High School. Other common expenditures are for computer lab and Internet upgrades that pre-date or are outside of the Common Core Technology Project as well as for murals, fences, tables and various construction projects.

Once the expenditure is recommended for approval by the BOC, it goes to the school board to be voted on. (Technically, the BOC is an advisory board only and the school board has the right to ignore its recommendations despite any political or legal risks of doing so.)

Most BOC members are not fans of the existence of priority funds, according Scott Folsom, a BOC board member.

“We are very much opposed to anything that divides the money up by seven. We are for dividing the money up by need,” Folsom said.

According to BOC meeting minutes, the priority funds are frequently discussed at BOC meetings. But once the projects reach the school board, the debate ends. Over the last year, all priority projects, which total over $2 million, have been approved by the board without debate. This happens despite bitter differences among board members on most other issues.

Despite the vigorous debate by the BOC, school board member Tamar Galatzan, in sentiments echoed by her colleague, Monica Garcia, said debate at the school board level was not necessary.

“In general, I think the board members respect the process that has been created,” Galatzan said.

Galatzan said the priority funds are an effective way to directly help a school, but that she has frequently clashed with the BOC about the use of her priority funds.

“The projects that we have funded for my board district are primarily projects that would never get funded otherwise,” she said, adding. “Everything is pretty transparent, and that’s why it’s frustrating when we have a project that is fully bond-fundable and we have all the paperwork has been done and certain people on the bond oversight committee decide the school doesn’t need that or want that, without ever having talked to anyone at the school.”

Folsom said that “Tamar is the one who gets the most upset about [priority funds]. She doesn’t have an understanding of when it’s a board member priority, that’s not the end of the discussion.”

Another oddity of the priority funds is that the board members are given them in a lump sum from each bond, and they can spend it all at once or spread it out over years. This has lead to several outgoing board members’ spending all of their funds before their term ends.

“Politically, there has been a tendency for outgoing school board members to spend every dime they have in their board member discretionary funds,” Folsom said. “I remember when Bennett Kayser came in, there was no money.”

Galatzan also said when she was elected in 2007, all the priority funds for her district had been spent.

Garcia said priority funds, versus general bond funds, are two different systems to help schools, but that priority funds help her essentially cut through red tape and directly help a school fast.

“I would trade in my [priority funds] if the district would give me the needs of all my schools, if that was the exchange, I would do that, but that’s not what’s available,” she said. “This is two different strategies that meet two different needs.”

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy

So now we have a hint of what the LA Unified board members were discussing during the four hours they met in private Tuesday night.

Part of the conversation dealt with finding a way to reach a financial settlement with Superintendent John Deasy to remove him from his post, as the LA Times reported this morning.

Who could be surprised?

The talks suggest that a majority of board members want Deasy gone, and Deasy himself has told people he has grown weary of dealing with incessant criticism — some deserved, some irrational — from board members who do not share his vision for the district and from a teachers union that views him as the embodiment of evil.

Setting aside all that toxicity, what the board doesn’t want is for Deasy’s employment to come down to a show of hands. That’s the plan for now. His performance review scheduled for Oct. 21, and a negative vote could start the countdown.

It seems apparent by the talks that the board would prefer a swifter resolution. Why? Lots of reasons.

Let’s start with the most obvious: Each member of the board would have to defend the vote he or she casts. Four of them are facing re-election early next year, and voters in their districts might not have the same feelings toward Deasy as a board member who follows him blindly or as a member who parrots the teachers union.

Yes, Deasy has ultimate responsibility for the disruptive events in the iPad and MiSiS programs. But he has also presided over improved academic performance and steadily rising graduation rates.

Further, it was the board, after all, that approved every one of Deasy’s steps and missteps, never mind a member’s day-later confessions of regret. Whatever happened, right or wrong, the board approved it.

Next, the district has been subsumed by a constant barrage of negativity. Reports of rising test scores and higher graduation rates are routinely overshadowed by the next example of blunder in the iPad and MiSiS adventures. The teachers union has been especially vocal on that score with outrage that obscures the fact that higher test scores, higher graduations rates and fewer dropouts reflect as well on teachers — maybe even better — than it does on Deasy.

Finally, crafting a settlement agreement unites the board as nothing else possibly could, even if the action appears to some city residents as cowardly. Even Deasy’s frequent supporters, Tamar Galatzan and Monica Garcia, can support a deal if it seems fair to Deasy, giving the board a united voice in saying, “Thanks, John. Have a nice life.”

So then what. The board appoints an interim — Deasy’s deputy Michelle King has raised her hand for the job — and a search begins for the district’s fifth superintendent since the turn of the century.

No doubt, the board members will seek out the most un-Deasy-like person they can find. Maybe that’s good, in a way. The board gets a few Kumbaya years with a go-along to get-along superintendent who slows the pace of change, builds on the positive student performance of the Deasy years and satisfies a teachers union that has been threatening to strike for higher salaries, the end of teacher evaluations, elimination of teacher jail and a return to pre-recession staffing levels.

Of course, the new superintendent gets the old superintendent’s budget, but that’s another story.

For now, though, the board has to decide the terms of disengagement: A thumbs up or down vote later this month or a clean deal that leaves both sides with genuine smiles of relief, each happy to be done with the other. Or maybe Deasy just decides he’s had enough and walks away.

Short of a performance evaluation, the only people who really get shortchanged are district voters. They’ll never get a full accounting from the school board members they elected of how they judged the good that Deasy brought to LA Unified against the issues they found untenable. 

Previous Posts: Board emerges from private meeting with no decision on Deasy; Deasy deputy expresses interest in serving as interim superintendent; Future of Deasy moves behind closed doors in board meeting

Superintendent John Deasy

Drama tonight. Or maybe not.

The LA Unified school board is convening a two-part session at 4 p.m. today — one open, the other closed, with Superintendent John Deasy the prime subject of conversation in the closed session.

Members have confirmed that they are using their privacy to determine what parameters to consider when Deasy comes up for his annual performance review in three weeks. That’s the headline for now, anyway. In fact, the board could do anything when it shuts out the public. The members could even vote to fire him — as they can at any time — although it’s not expected.

One certainty, as of this morning: Deasy confirmed he has not been invited to attend. He could if he wanted to but it’s unlikely.

At any rate, the closed session is expected to go long into the night, with each member getting a chance to vent on Deasy. They’ll reappear in public to announce any votes taken, then call for an official adjournment.

No major theatrics are anticipated in the open session.

The only vote scheduled is to certify that all schools have sufficient textbooks and instructional materials for all students in the core and required curriculum areas.

One resolution for introduction deals with creating a task force to study the implications of deleting emails, including the possibility they may be needed for litigation or to fulfill Public Records Act requests. The sponsors are unlikely allies: Board Members Tamar Galatzan, Monica Ratliff and Bennett Kayser have banded together to have the task force in place by the end of October to review the district’s Records Retention and Destruction Policy and report recommendations in January.

“I am glad to support this effort to bring greater transparency to LAUSD and am eager to learn what other government agencies and school districts do with their emails,” Kayser told LA School Report.

Two other motions are aimed at making schools safer. One by Monica Garcia, George McKenna and President Richard Vladovic supports Proposition 47, which would reduce the classification of most “non-serious and nonviolent property and drug crimes” from a felony to a misdemeanor. A change in the law could “potentially directs hundreds of millions of dollars in savings from reduced prison costs to K-12 schools, mental health and drug treatment, and victim services,” they write in the resolution.

The second, drafted by Ratliff and Galatzan would recognize the week of Oct.19 – 25 as America’s Safe Schools Week.

Finally, Ratliff wants to make it easier to report fraud to the Office of the Inspector General by putting a “Hotline” button on the district’s homepage.

Previous Posts: Two groups urging LAUSD board to be objective, transparent; LAUSD keeps no written records of Deasy performance reviews; Closed LAUSD board session grew out of request by Ratliff

In separate letters to the board today, both groups called for more objectivity in evaluating Deasy and more transparency in how they decide on the criteria used to judge him.

The board is planning to meet tomorrow in a private session to discuss what metrics to use when Deasy appears before the members next month — again, in private — for his annual job evaluation. Deasy has not been invited to tomorrow’s meeting.

In one letter, the LA Civic Alliance, which includes some of the city’s most influential philanthropists, real estate developers, bankers, lawyers and non-profit leaders, called into question board members’ “real motives” for tomorrow’s closed-door meeting, which many district insiders have speculated is clearing a path to remove Deasy from the helm next month.

While neither letter mention’s Deasy’s handing of the iPad problem or the new computerized student-tracking system — both of which have been plagued with problems — both make it clear that Deasy should be judged by more objective data.

“Superintendent Deasy is not perfect. But progress made in boosting the education of our children under his leadership outweighs the business decisions by which he is being judged,” the Civic Alliance said in the letter, sent to all seven board members.

The groups argue that dismissing Deasy would throw the district into chaos with another transition at LA Unified, and that instability would jeopardize the student achievement gains the district has made over the last two years.

Since Deasy was appointed in 2011, district graduation and attendance rates have gone up, the numbers of African American and Latino students taking Advanced Placement courses and exams have increased, and the district’s school discipline policy has been overhauled resulting in a drastically reduced suspensions and expulsions.

The group says it is alarmed by the board’s decision to call an emergency closed session to discuss the Superintendent’s evaluation.

“We are very concerned that the Board of Directors is going backwards in terms of more closed sessions that curtail community engagement and transparency and potentially allow political influence,” its letter said.

That sentiment was echoed in the second letter, this one from a consortium of educators and community groups.

Leaders from InnerCity Struggle, the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, Community Coalition and Educators for Excellence, all of whom have partnered with the district on significant programs, want a more objective means of evaluating Deasy.

“We urge the Board to ensure a fair process for determining the parameters to review the Superintendent, the groups say in their letter to board members and their staffs. “We call for an open forum to better understand the perspectives of Board Members on leadership priorities for LAUSD. We also request that these parameters be widely published to all families and employees to foster public trust and transparency.”

And like the Civic Alliance, they called on the board to open decision-making to the public, saying, “Real and honest change doesn’t happen behind closed doors.”