Shoreline Unified School District administrators, trustees, teachers and parents met twice in one week to address transparency as the district moves forward with efforts to balance its deficit budget.
A dozen staff and parents gathered for an ad hoc budget committee meeting on Monday night to tackle the budget head-on, while last Wednesday the district’s trustees held a working retreat during which a broad spectrum of topics were discussed—from enhancing inter-school communication to staffing development and funding accountability.
Combined, the two meetings brought several issues to the forefront that have confused and exasperated the West Marin community since last June, when the district revealed its budget woes.
“We want to make sure we’re as transparent as possible,” said Superintendent Tom Stubbs, a figurehead at both meetings. “We would love to sit down with you and explain [the budget] because it is confusing.”
At the ad hoc budget meeting, administrators introduced the idea of organizing interested community members into five working groups that will each dissect specific portions of the budget, such as salaries, benefits, or books and supplies. Administrators say the working groups will give the many people invested in the district’s wellbeing an opportunity to become mini-experts on the budget rather than just relying on one person—Shoreline’s chief business officer—to explain the entire budget.
With a greater understanding shared by a larger group of people, administrators hope public uproar over how and why the budget is so deeply in the red will shift to a more constructive dialogue about how to fix it.
“Without a strong foundation for understanding, we can’t all determine what to change,” said Bruce Abbott, the district’s incoming chief business officer, who joined Shoreline in December and is overlapping for one month with the outgoing chief business officer, Susan Skipp. “If you don’t have an agreement on what makes a solid budget, how can you cut it? Let’s all go through this. Let’s all make sure we agree.”
The move to put more eyes on the budget comes during the threat of staff layoffs. In September, the Marin County Office of Education demanded that Shoreline correct its deficit through layoffs of around six teachers and a similar number of staff by the end of this school year—or the district will face a county takeover.
At last month’s board meeting, Ms. Skipp presented an updated version of the budget that included savings projections if the district were to lay off teachers and staff. To calculate these savings, she sliced the bottom of the seniority list, eliminating the district’s most recent, youngest hires.
In total, county-mandated layoffs would amount to a savings of over $650,000 for the 2015-16 school year and nearly $700,000 for 2016-17. To avoid those layoffs, the district would have to recoup these savings through service cuts, shuffling staff positions and attrition.
As a March 15 county deadline for a preliminary teacher layoff notices approaches, administrators are looking to the budget working groups to take some of the heat off the district when the time comes to make tough decisions. Despite uncertainties about the actual effect the groups will have, participants in Monday night’s meeting appeared pleased that they were finally being included in the conversation.
“I think this is the only way to get down to the bottom of it,” said Anne Halley-Harper, a teacher at West Marin School. “With the [monthly board meetings], new people ask the same old questions, and it’s just backpedaling. A lot of people just don’t understand.”
The number of participants in each group will remain “fluid,” Ms. Skipp said, although she guesses that groups will have around four or five regular members. On their own initiative, groups will meet to hash out budget details and come up with clarifying questions. At the March 31 ad hoc budget meeting, questions and comments from each group will be collated into a single report that will then be presented as recommendations to the board.
Although no trustees attended the ad hoc budget meeting, they were out in full force at last Wednesday’s board retreat. All seven trustees, all four principals, the superintendent, the business officers and several teachers met at West Marin School to discuss how the district can improve in five different general topic areas. While still a working meeting, the retreat format was far less formal than the monthly trustee meetings—there was even a catered dinner with more than enough food for the 20 or so people present.
The retreat stemmed from a 2012 meeting called the Listening Campaign, an effort by Shoreline to start a district-wide conversation involving every stakeholder about problems that have been causing distress as well as divisiveness between schools.
“I think the best way to succeed with the district’s goals is by talking about them a lot,” said trustee Jim Lino, a longstanding member of the board. “And we also need to have proof of improvement to see where we’ve made progress.”
Mr. Lino suggested that the group prioritize individual subjects within each topic area in order to set timelines for actionable steps. For instance, under the “Cultural Proficiencies” topic area, retreat participants agreed to prioritize ongoing staff training over other concerns such as under-resourced students and bullying.
One area everyone agreed had taken great strides is communication between schools. Principals from Tomales High School and West Marin School praised a new student-led peer tutoring program that relies on Skype and Facetime to put high school students in contact with their elementary school peers.
“With the geographical limitations of this district, collaboration has always been difficult, but it’s so important,” said trustee Jane Healy, who left her position as board president at last month’s board meeting.
Ms. Healy called for school-to-school communication to be institutionalized so that future principal and staff hires can more fluidly fill gaps left by former staff who may have formed effective collaborations during their tenures.