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School board chops $2.6M

With pain in their voices and etched on their faces, the Sonoma Valley Unified School District board Tuesday cut almost $2.6 million from next year’s budget.

Ending a process that started last spring when Gov. Jerry Brown’s May revised budget came out, and spanning almost 18 meetings with staff, administrators, the community, students and other stakeholders, the board was unanimous in its decision.

Before calling for a motion, board President Gary DeSmet said, “From my perspective as a board member, all of us have weathered this particular test well. There has been little outright anger or fight. It’s been graceful and respectful through a dozen meetings – a gift to witness.”

“I am sorry for lost jobs and for promises undone or unmet,” he continued. “I am personally sorry for not having saving answers.”

About 40 persons, mostly district employees, attended the meeting. Only five people addressed the board in what was a foregone conclusion.

Cut were five days of school and three employee buy-back days. Cut in half were custodial services. Cut was the Sonoma Valley Adult School. Cut was class size reduction for the second grade.

The cuts mean a loss of about 21 positions. And the furlough days and buy-back days will result in a 4.4 percent pay cut for district employees. The salary scale for teachers starts at $36,705 and tops out at $71,992. The classified salary scale runs from $1,303 monthly and tops out at $5,832 monthly.

Some items the board cut might not disappear, such as middle school sports and the 25 percent cut for elementary libraries. While the board cut the funding, the Sonoma Valley Education Foundation will be looking at ways it can help with the library cuts.

“We’re waiting for specifics on how it will affect each site,” said Laura Zimmerman, the foundation’s executive director. “Then we’ll reach out to the community to find out which programs they want to see continue.”

Zimmerman said the hope is to establish some sort of sustainable effort to support the libraries in the future.

“The cuts are going to hit hard when school starts next fall,” she said.

The cut in custodial services has drawn the most comment from school staff.

Superintendent Louann Carlomagno called it a significant reduction. “That’s half the custodial budget,” she said. “We’re going to be working with the sites, the maintenance people and the custodians. The custodians are the ones who know what needs to be addressed.”

But there are still a lot of details that need to be resolved on how to make the cuts and how to re-arrange things after.

“The furlough days and the buy-back days need to be negotiated with the bargaining units,” she said.

While transportation for special education took a $110,000 cut, it means the district will be doing away with outside vendors and handling the bussing in-house instead. The district is also facing a $320,000 cut in transportation funding from the state this year and the state will eliminate the rest of the transportation funding next year.

“If the state eliminates all (home-to-school) transportation funding, it would be detrimental,” Carlomagno said. “It would be a significant challenge to continue transportation.”

There are some schools, such as Dunbar, where students can’t walk to school.

Gateway School is being chopped. But Carlomagno said there are currently only two or three students there and the teacher is being used as a floater around the district to fill in where needed.

Other cuts included 50 percent of the Sonoma Valley High School independent study program; core replacement funding at El Verano, Flowery and Sassarini elementary schools; $100,000 from the district office; cuts of .6 FTE (fulltime equivalents) at each of the two middle school sites and additional furlough days for the superintendent, deputy superintendent and Sonoma Valley High School principal.

Even after the cuts, the board was warned by Deputy Superintendent Justin Frese, “the outlook isn’t good.”

The best case, he said, is if the governor’s tax proposal passes in November, but even then, the state will eliminate transportation funding.

“Worse-case scenario, if the tax increase doesn’t pass there’ll be more education cuts,” he said. “And they’d be around $370 a student.”

“This isn’t the end of the conversation when it comes to budget cuts,” he added.

The board was equally glum.

“We don’t like it,” said Nicole Ducarroz. “We don’t like the decision we’ll have to make. We’re all in this together.”

Dan Gustafson talked about how his father had to go to work at 12, and became a strong advocate for education, “because he didn’t get one.”

“This is a lousy situation and it’s not getting any better,” Gustafson said. “We make the decision, but you have to live with it.”

Cam Hawing apologized for having to make the cuts. “We don’t have any options, just cuts,” he said.

Helen Marsh said there’s a lot of great work going on in the district, but it can’t be done without money. And she was miffed that there wasn’t going to be a speaker from the district at Friday’s State of the Valley forum.

“There’s a cloud of uncertainty hanging over us,” Marsh said. “Is it going to be bad – or is it going to be worse.”

DeSmet again brought up a road-trip to Sacramento and having a board meeting on the Capitol steps. “I want to say things in a place where people will hear it,” he said.

Prior to the vote, Carlomagno called it, “a sad day.”

Wednesday, she told the Index-Tribune, “Everyone understands that we can’t control what Sacramento is doing to public education.”

While the district has been holding meetings since September, the planning started back in the spring.

“This has taken a toll on everyone,” she said. “This was a very intense process on all levels.”

She’s optimistic and hopeful though. “Our educators are pros. They’ll figure out how to get through.”

“But it was heart-wrenching,” she added.