Thursday’s Shoreline Unified school board meeting started with an end.
In an “unusual” principal’s report, Joe Nokes, the music teacher and interim principal at Bodega Bay School, called up friend and colleague Mike Fritsche, the new P.E. coach for Tomales Elementary hired in August 2013, to stand beside him at the front of the room. “You know they’re scared, because they’re at the bottom of the chopping block,” Mr. Nokes said of Mr. Fritsche and his wife, Courtney, who was hired three months ago to be a third grade teacher at Tomales.
“I know what this feels like,” he said, describing how he was out of work for years when music and art classes were the first to go whenever the economy faltered. “I remember how disruptive it was. Here I was, 29 years old, and I didn’t have a job. I guess I’m telling you all this is because what we deal with are people. He—this guy,” Mr.
Nokes said, puliing Mr. Fritsche close to him, “is not an F.T.E., a full-time equivalent. He is not a full-time worker. He is a man, and he teaches your kids like you wouldn’t believe.
“I was going to go out next year. I told those kids when they started kindergarten that we would go out together,” Mr. Nokes continued. “But in light of Mr. Fritsche and his situation, I’m saying this is it. It’s gotta be this year.”
There was hardly a dry eye in the high school auditorium, as everyone rose in a standing ovation. “Nokes is a class act, man,” someone said softly as the music teacher shook hands with the trustees.
“I told you it was going to be unusual,” Mr. Nokes laughed.
There’s been much talk at board meetings over the past month of distant layoffs, reductions in hours, elimination of programs—always presented in the abstract. Mr. Nokes’ announcement of his retirement, an attempt to save two young teachers and their family from unemployment, was one of the first times a clear and familiar face represented what the Shoreline Unified School District stands to lose in the coming months.
At tonight’s meeting at West Marin School, the administrative cabinet will put forward two separate resolutions for the board’s approval. If other cuts and retirements equal to the proposed savings—Superintendent Tom Stubbs estimated $715,000 on Wednesday evening—do not occur by the end of this school year, the deficit will trigger what business manager Susan Skipp described as the “worst possible scenario.”
One resolution—“Reduction or Discontinuance of Certain Particular Kinds of Services for the 2015-16 School Year”—could trigger pink slips for 10 teachers on May 15, likely resulting in only five layoffs after working through a complicated procedure of seniority and credentials set out in the state’s education code. The second—“Reduction of Classified School Services for the 2015-16 School Year”—could permanently reduce hours for support staff, by 2.9 full-time equivalents for instructional assistants and special resource aides; 1.7 full-time equivalents for library clerks, computer lab monitors and art teachers; and .25 full-time equivalents for the groundskeeper and one custodian. (The tentative proposals Mr. Stubbs shared with the Light on Wednesday evening still needed final approval from the district’s counsel.)
As soon as the board casts their votes, the administrative team will begin implementing the proposed reductions that were first developed at the ad hoc budget meetings, to prevent the resolutions from triggering automatic layoffs next spring.
“This is not easy,” Mr. Stubbs said Wednesday night. “Just know, going forward, all those other cuts we talked about will take place. We can’t put that in the resolution because the county wouldn’t believe us. They want to see those numbers two years down the road when they’ve actually been implemented.”
Leading up to tonight’s meeting, administrators had presented multiple iterations of a proposal to trim at least $1,344,700 from the budget by June 2017, including slashing the high school athletic budget, summer school, outdoor education and breakfast at the elementary schools. But last Thursday, hours before the board’s regular meeting, board president Jane Healy, Mr. Stubbs and Ms. Skipp had a conference call with Marin County Office of Education’s leadership to vet their latest 43-point plan. The county said the proposed cuts were not what they were looking for: instead, to approve the budget, they wanted a simple resolution that enumerated a number of positions for layoffs and their total dollar value in savings.
“Basically, what we were told is that the plan is fine and good, that we can reduce the athletic budget by 10 percent and reduce discretionary spending, but they said that is not what we want to see,” Mr. Stubbs said. “The county doesn’t want to know that we’re doing all these little things to remove expenses out of the structure of our deficit. They said most expenses are tied up in positions, in teaching and classified positions. And so when we put our proposal to the county, they want to see where we are going to be doing our cutting. … They said, ‘We don’t want to know about attrition. We don’t want to know about incentives to retire. That’s not what we’re looking for.’”
Ms. Healy, Ms. Skipp and Mr. Stubbs waited until just before 9 p.m. to deliver this news to the audience, a room that had emptied of many listeners who were eager to put their kids to bed on a school night. “Should we have talked about that earlier maybe?” trustee Jill Manning-Sartori asked.
Since Shoreline’s fiscal situation was first discussed last spring (when administrators reassured the district they were not yet in a crisis), directives from the county seem to be increasingly garbled: whether that communication failed on the county’s end or was lost on Shoreline’s administration is unclear, but every month seems to hold a new surprise from the county office, from things as simple as deadlines to what the county wanted.
“We’ve never changed our position,” Terena Mares, the deputy superintendent for business services, said Friday. “The plan they have is great, and the message that they got is that they are moving in the right direction. But our consistent message from day one is that your reductions have to be specific to positions. You can’t say we’re going to cut $500,000 in salaries.”
The administration could have handled this issue better, said Donna Faure, a West Marin School mom. Both the board and Ms. Skipp “carry the weight of bad communication and uninspired management at best,” she said.
This increasing mistrust played out at Thursday’s meeting when Markey Lees, a labor representative from the California School Employees Association’s North Bay Field Office, grilled Ms. Skipp about “drastically” increased spending between the 2013-14 actuals that were presented earlier this month and the 2014-15 budget. The cost of “interagency services” increased 147.8 percent this year; unemployment insurance, by 918.1 percent; and textbook and other materials by 348.7 percent, Ms. Lees pointed out. To groans and shouts, Ms. Skipp said she didn’t have the answers off the top of her head.
In a response on Wednesday, Ms. Skipp admitted she had entered a figure inaccurately on the payroll spreadsheets she uses to complete her budgets. The state’s unemployment insurance rate has been set at 0.05 percent, but when Ms. Skipp entered the figures, she wrote .005—the equivalent of 0.5 percent—instead of .0005. When the extra zero is added, the district’s expenditures decrease by $90,000 by the end of 2017, a savings that will be reflected in the first interim report, Ms. Skipp said.
In total, the 2013-14 unaudited actuals were off by $810,276, putting the district $360,986 closer to a positive ending fund balance in 2017 after certain restricted funds have been set aside, not including the additional money discovered on Wednesday.
The board member’s health benefits were also referenced frequently on Thursday as the first item to eliminate. Yet only one trustee, Monique Moretti, acknowledged the spending and agreed to give up her benefits.
Marco Lopez and Gabriel Romo, two juniors at Tomales High, hesitantly stood to read a prepared statement they said represented the views of parents and students at the school. “We all know about the budget cuts. We’ve been most affected by what goes on,” one said. “School is supposed to be a place where we come to learn and a place where we can get an education. We do not need these distractions.” Handing the paper over, the other student said, “We have a counter-proposal. The health benefits the board receives are a massive amount of money that adds up to $40,000. If I’m wrong, correct me please, but you are said to be the leaders of our district and our schools. To be a volunteer means to serve the community without any personal gain. … Students should be the least affected from everything that’s being cut, not the other way around. We ask that you start by cutting what costs the most and least affects the students.”
Ms. Healy quickly changed the subject. “Thank you for your comment, and we’re actually on Item #21,” she said.
But by the time the board arrived at the agenda item, a trustee blamed teacher benefits for the district’s fiscal crisis. Tim Kehoe said their health insurance was “the highest benefit package in Marin, Sonoma and Napa counties, the highest. It’s the Cadillac plan,” he said. “It’s killing us.”
At Thursday’s meeting and in subsequent interviews, several employees said felt they were assuming the brunt of the cuts as the district’s administration and school board were being let off the hook.
“There is such a lack of trust. The reasoning behind layoffs of only certificated or classified has not been explained very well,” said one teacher who asked to remain anonymous. “Although principals are certificated, they have been left off the list. Classified management, although still classified, are also off the list. So are board member benefits. … It was the total lack of leadership, vision, and foresight from the district, the board, the administration, and the C.B.O. that put us in this mess.”
Nearing 10 p.m., the meeting ended with a final retirement. Dale Webster, the custodian at Bodega Bay School for 19 years and a legendary surfer, walked to the front of the room and asked Ms. Skipp if she remembered an offhanded comment he’d made at a party more than an decade ago, that if the district knew how much a person could love a school, they could convince him to work for free.
“Look at my paycheck. You pay me $34,000 to work [part-time] at Bodega Bay School,” Mr. Webster said. “I am broke. I can’t afford to work here any more. All these benefits are great, but I don’t have the money to take care of my teeth, to go use my Kaiser card.
“I’ll do my part and turn in my keys,” he continued. “You can have my money. I feel like I’m leaving a sinking ship with Susan. … It’s been a pleasure working for you.”
Mr. Webster started for the door, but turned around to add another thought. To save the district money, “I just want to say I know a custodian in Sonoma who brings her own materials.”