February 20, 2009

In my previous messages I shared our concerns for the economic crisis we are all experiencing.  Well, the good news is that we finally have a state budget for 2008-09, and an historically early budget for 2009-10; the bad news is the state budget we have.  The deficit in funding for this school year is approximately 7.84%, cuts that must be made mid-year. For the 2009-10 school year the deficit will be approximately 13.1%.  This is over 20% of cuts to be made in the next 18 months.  These will be tough times indeed but we realize there will still be opportunities to improve our effectiveness and innovative ways to address our mission.

We are currently planning for a worst case budget scenario and preparing to layoff over twenty employees.  This might increase class sizes and it is hoped that other ways of sharing the effect of the budget crisis can be found.  The District will be seeking incentives for those who are able to retire; a teacher at the top of the pay scale is worth almost two beginning teachers’ salaries.  We won’t be able to provide a raise in salary and will also be negotiating with teachers to freeze the step and column pay increase most of them automatically receive according to their contract.

While we are carefully addressing such budget issues to minimize the damage from funding cuts, particularly in the classroom itself, our strategic plan helps us to focus our energy and measure effectiveness.  In that plan the first system strategy in moving from where we are to where we want to be is “Governance Alignment”.  Our Board has taken on the tough work of policy development and adopted many policies that improve operations of the District.  Evaluations of personnel that required attention are being improved and negotiations with union members are reflecting more common purpose and focus.

This common purpose and focus will be required for our District and community to meet our mission and provide “Academic Excellence and Support for All Students”.  Another system strategy we are using to address the complex and changing needs of our students is increasing our “Response to Intervention (RTI)”.   Special Education is an expensive model of remediation that addresses lower performing students after they have fallen approximately two years behind their peers; this has not shown great success in bringing students to grade level proficiency.  Although driven by legal mandates from the federal government, the costs of special education are not fully covered and we must use money from our District’s general fund to meet these mandates. Our approach to avoid such an ineffective model is to intervene and support learners who need it before they get to the second or third grade.  We are directing our unrestricted resources toward assessing student needs in preschool, kindergarten and first grade to prevent them from falling into the special education model.  An example of this is the Dibels reading assessment we began giving first grade students this year to measure their growth as readers in the critical primary years.  Other assessments will be added as we further develop the RTI.  This allows us to proactively support the needs of each student.

As we go through these hard economic times, tough choices must be made while not losing sight of our mission.  These are times when creativity, collaboration and communication are more valuable than ever.  We will succeed in providing a world-class education for our students because the Bonsall community deserves no less and our future depends on the quality of education we give our students today.  Thank you for your time and interest in our District.

Yours,

Justin Cunningham, Ed. D