|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Teachers and parents in the San Ramon Valley continue to speak out about proposed layoffs that were tentatively approved by the board last month as district officials work through ongoing discussions about declining enrollment and budget constraints.
The school board’s 4-1 vote to approve cutting teaching staff by a total of 16 full-time equivalents (FTEs) – including major cuts to world languages – was preceded by numerous public comments and a lengthy debate that extended late into the evening on Feb. 24, before its reluctant approval by a majority of trustees.
While the item is set to return later in the school year for a final vote, teachers and community members returned to the San Ramon Valley Unified School District headquarters for the Board of Education’s March 10 meeting to continue expressing dismay and pushing for new solutions as trustees discussed enrollment projections and the latest budget report.
In particular, numerous public comments in the more than an hour of non-agendized discussion centered on concerns about the district’s offering of personalized learning initiatives (PLIs), which allow students to take outside classes for credit, many times online.
That topic became an increasingly hot one at the previous board meeting. The district’s expanded language program allows students to take outside classes to fulfill the key world language requirement for California’s public university system if their language of choice isn’t offered within the district. With cuts to existing world languages on the chopping block, that could be the only option for more and more students.
Jack Sarkany, a district parent and 21-year chemistry teacher at California High, pointed to the contradiction between documented poor learning outcomes for many students during shutdowns early in the COVID-19 pandemic while continuing to offer credit for online courses after schools reopened.
“While teaching online, the district told teachers like myself constantly that online learning resulted in learning loss compared to in-person learning,” Sarkany said.
“Many studies backed this in subsequent years,” he continued. “My own children struggled mightily in subsequent courses after they had received very high marks online from previous courses. I also teach online chemistry where students who do online chemistry instead of in person have had a significantly higher drop/fail rate compared to students who took it in person.”
With these issues at play even in online learning within the district, Sarkany said there was all the more to lose by relying on outside online courses.
“The hypocritical stance of online solo courses being acceptable learning, particularly while the evidence says otherwise, is offensive,” Sarkany said. “I hope these issues can be addressed when the district pushes forward with their grade reform, as I want what is best for our students and their education.”
Ashley Hoover, a longtime Dougherty Valley High Spanish teacher, specifically asked the board to consider making changes to its PLI policies, which were first implemented by former superintendent Rick Schmitt during his tenure from 2016 to 2020.
“When I first started teaching, our world language program stood as a model, offering broad cultural exposure and real language opportunities,” Hoover said. “Today, it is concerning that the current use of PLIs are putting the quality of programs at risk and jeopardizing our students’ futures.”
“All of our district language classes are essential to student growth,” she continued. “A full spectrum of language supports varied student interests, helps cultivate global learning, and ensures that no learner is left behind due to limited choices.”
Hoover added that relying on PLIs does not offer the same benefits as a robust language program within the district, and “rather, supports monolingualism.”
At the previous board meeting in February, Superintendent CJ Cammack had said he shared many of the concerns about PLIs that were raised that evening and would be looking into options to present to the board in the future. However, Hoover urged the board to engage further with her and her colleagues’ concerns about PLIs and cuts to world language offerings, rather than waiting for the topic to come to a future agenda.
“This lack of response is sending a message of apathy, and expressing a sad mentality that learning other languages does not matter in this district,” Hoover said.
With the topic not on that evening’s agenda, the board was prohibited by the Brown Act from responding to concerns raised that evening. But the trustees were able to discuss other challenges in the district that were part of agendized topics, particularly declining enrollment projections and an increasingly tight budget.
Despite new housing that is expected to increase enrollment in certain parts of the district, demographers from MGT Impact Solutions projected that it would decline by 16% overall throughout the district over the next decade due to a number of factors.
“The smaller incoming cohorts will lead to declining attendance areas,” said MGT’s Isaac Johnson, who presented the report in the first hour of last week’s board meeting. “We do have planned residential developments – our forecast takes into account about 5,000 units added to this – and there will be pockets where we see increases in the resident student population. But it’s not enough to offset the overall decline that we’re seeing across the community.”
Johnson said that while the district’s student yield factors remain healthy, they are still trending downward compared with previous years. He added that transit-oriented development, such as much of what is being planned, built and starting to come onto the market at Bishop Ranch, generally doesn’t increase resident student yield by a significant enough amount to offset the projected decline fueled in large part by declining birthrates throughout the country.
“I’m told that this is a story that everyone is familiar with, and those are the driving factors behind it,” Johnson said. “If we think about what it would take to change those trends – birthrates don’t change overnight. They don’t change within one year, and there’s a five-year lag period if they do turn around before you’ll actually see the benefits of that.”
“It’s really about more of a societal change that we’re seeing,” he continued. “As I mentioned, it’s not local to your community. It’s something that we’re seeing across the state and across the country as well.”
The district’s second interim budget report, presented by chief business officer Danny Hillman in the final hour of the meeting, was for the most part another familiar story. The report marked the next step in the district’s budget cycle, with the board’s unanimous vote to certify it at the end of the evening meaning that it is now set for review by the county office of education, then the state, should the county approve it.
At this point in the budget process last year, the Contra Costa County Office of Education downgraded the district’s budget from “positive” to “qualified” over concerns that it would not be able to meet its financial obligations for the immediate future, kicking off a months-long additional review that included a third interim report from the district county study of the district’s finances.
Following a deal with the San Ramon Valley Education Association and the finalization of $13 million in budget cuts that had been pending, the district’s budget status was restored to a positive status in the current school year as the district has continued to balance its budget by seeking additional sources of revenue. That includes the planned sale of its headquarters at 699 Old Orchard Road, with operations set to be shifted to a new location in San Ramon that will generate lease revenue from other operations on the property.
As Hillman noted in his report to the board, the second interim budget report is largely unchanged from the first interim report that was approved last fall. The district’s deficit has decreased by more than $20 million in the past year to $14.8 million in the current year, with the unrestricted fund “mostly balanced” at a deficit of $430,000. Ongoing expenses are being covered with one-time grants and grants from restricted rather than unrestricted funds.
Hillman said that as costs rise and revenues fall, the district is still not able to fulfill its 7% reserve policy, but added that reserve funds are “stable” at 4% per year currently and in the next two fiscal years.
“We can meet our financial obligations for the next two years, as the report shows,” Hillman said.
