‘State of Our Schools’ Presentations Paint a Grim Picture

• Deficit Funding Calls for Cuts Everywhere But Superintendent’s Compensation

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

As California’s budget woes continue to deepen, the fourth annual State of Our Schools presentations, held at Malibu High School on Nov. 17 and at Santa Monica High School on Nov. 18, struck a grim note.
The event, co-sponsored by the district, the council of PTA and the political action committee Community for Excellent Public Schools, was created to showcase the district’s “accomplishments and challenges,” according to the CEPS web page.
This year, teachers and students shared inspirational stories; talented young musicians performed; and district officials presented impressive achievement statistics and anecdotes about the success of district alumni.
Samohi graduate Randy Bresnik, classmate of many Malibu students in the 1980s, made not just the state of the schools report but the international news this week for his series of three spacewalks at the International Space Station; but even that event was overshadowed by an increasingly dire budget deficit crisis.
“This fourth annual presentation felt like a wake—in advance,” former PTA president Rebecca Kennerly wrote on the CEPS blog. “If deficit spending remains unchanged, the district will have a negative fund balance by the end of 2010-11.”
The district’s operating deficit is expected to reach at least $10 million this year.
“We can’t depend on Sacramento,” was the message delivered by district superintendent Tim Cuneo at the event in Santa Monica. “SMMUSD receives nearly three-quarters of its operating revenue from the state and yet and the new Pew study found California, ‘on the brink of insolvency,’” Cuneo stated during his address.
It wasn’t all bad news. Cuneo’s presentation included statistics that show the district’s pass rate far exceeding state and national levels. The district continues to show steady improvement on high school exit exams and English language arts and math passage rates, despite deteriorating funding.
According to the superintendent’s presentation, state funding for the district has dropped from approximately $5880 per student in 2007-08 to 2004-05 levels of $5029. District students receive an additional $2257 per student from sources that include parcel tax measures and money from the cities of Malibu and Santa Monica.
That additional community-based funding, together with what Kennerly describes as “careful fiscal management,” has helped deflect some of the impact of the state budget crisis, but not for long, according to Cuneo, because 72 percent of district revenues come directly from Sacramento.
“When the state economy is in the tank, so are we,” Cuneo said. “If we don’t make changes in our expenditures, we won’t be able to survive.”
The superintendent outlined what he described as “proactive steps” currently underway in the district, including $4.5 million in budget cuts for the 2009-10 budget, strategy meetings by the financial oversight committee and the superintendent’s budget advisory committee and plans.
Cuneo also discussed the progress of the district’s advisory committee organized to study the feasibility of a emergency temporary parcel tax, and reported that district officials are engaged in labor negotiations with union leaders and administrators over pay and benefit reductions, but spring layoffs are anticipated to be an inevitable consequence of the ongoing crisis.
Cuneo himself recently came under fire from the local teachers union and district parents, when a survey revealed that he is one of the highest paid school superintendents in the county.
Cuneo, who relocated from Northern California in July of 2008 to accept the post of interim superintendent and was soon selected to fill the post full time, receives a $220,000 base salary, a $38,000 housing allowance and a $12,000 car and cell phone stipend, a contract that the board of education defends as fair compensation based on Cuneo’s performance.
Pam Brady, past president of the California PTA and a former member of the SMMUSD board, also focused on Sacramento when she delivered the State of Our Schools keynote address.
Brady accused state legislators of attempting to “balance the state’s budget woes on the backs of California’s children” and called on parents to keep fighting the gridlock in Sacramento. “[Sacramento needs to] understand that to build California and to be strong again, we need to invest in our children,” the Malibuite said.
Everyone seemed to agree that the best defense of education was strong offence. “Advocacy is the only game in town—and we had all better start playing as hard as we can,” Kennerly wrote, following the event.
More information is available online at www.smmusd.org or on the CEPS blog at http://excellentpublicschools.blogspot.com/