Fears of losing a reading intervention program, frustrations over the location of board meetings and opposition to board health benefits were big topics at Shoreline Unified School District’s meeting last week. But two issues that community members wanted addressed on Thursday—the location of board meetings and ending board benefits—were not placed on the agenda because board president Jill Sartori said there were already too many items.
According to board policy, issues brought to the district office more than a week in advance of a meeting will be placed on the agenda. “Only things submitted within the week can be removed,” said Laurie Monserrat, who cares for a 12-year-old nephew who attends West Marin School. The three issues were discussed at some length during public comment, but the board was barred from responding because the issues were not listed on the agenda.
The Parent-Teacher-Student Association, distressed over the prospect of losing a key resource, called on the district to reinstate at least one reading intervention teacher position. Two intervention teachers—Sue Gonzales, who worked at West Marin, and Sandy Kaplan, of Tomales Elementary—retired this year with an incentive package offered to employees as part of an effort to remedy the district’s budget crisis.
Reading intervention teachers offered a host of services to students, including one-on-one and small-group reading lessons and instruction in phonics, vocabulary and reading comprehension. Those tasks will now either be taken over by grade teachers and aides or fall to the wayside.
Imelda Macias, a mother and president of West Marin’s English Learner Advisory Council, said through a translator that the teachers offered critical support to new students, English-language learners and those “who struggle the most.” A member of the P.T.S.A., Rhonda Kutter, pleaded with the board to not leave gaps in education “just based on who happened to leave. It just can’t be random.”
Advocates recognized that two new teachers would be too expensive given budget constraints; the P.T.S.A. asked the board to hire just one intervention teacher who could work across the district.
Ms. Monserrat—who raised numerous issues during the meeting—argued that, without help, kids who struggle to read might be routed into special education services, which cost the district “so much more” in the long run.
But not everyone in the audience last Thursday agreed that the district should replace even one intervention specialist. The fifth grade teacher from Tomales, Meredith Leask, said the program still existed at their school—just in a different form, with teachers taking on those
duties.
“It’s not that the program’s gone away at our site. We have a schedule. It’s just not a person,” Ms. Leask said. She cautioned the board against rehiring. “Something goes wrong, we add it back in and we’re right back where we were,” she said in reference to the budget crisis.
Superintendent Tom Stubbs, who will leave his position at the end of June, said the district had discussed the impacts of all the retirements on the school’s educational program. “Almost every week we were talking about impacts. We probably went through 20 different scenarios,” he said. Mr. Stubbs recommended having a “check in” at some point in the year to evaluate how staffers across the district were coping with the losses.
Still, advocates for a staffed program believe the funding for an intervention teacher exists—in the form of board health benefits.
Those benefits became a point of contention last year; the issue has been placed on board agendas multiple times, but repeatedly tabled.
“If we can’t afford reading intervention, we can’t afford board benefits,” said Donna Faure, the mother of a West Marin School student and the treasurer of the P.T.S.A. According to her research, larger schools in Marin offer health benefits, but the vast majority that are Shoreline’s size do not.
Even a contingent of women from the Mainstreet Moms, a Point Reyes Station advocacy group typically more vocal about environmental issues and voting, also showed up to protest the health benefits. Martha Proctor, one of roughly 50 members, read from a letter sent to the district that many in West Marin volunteer without any compensation. Providing benefits “takes away needed funding for students,” she said.
The board’s health benefits cost the district about $33,000 last year, according to Bruce Abbott, the district’s budget official—a three percent drop from last year that he attributed to board members paying for some things out of pocket. (Four of seven board members currently receive benefits.)
The retirements this year of six teachers and six classified staffers have helped the district rein in what was last year a roughly $1.2 million budget deficit that could have brought the district to insolvency in a few years. Next year, Mr. Abbott said the district will have a slight surplus due to lower salaries for part-time interim administrative positions. In school years after 2015-16, he projects between a $100,000 and $150,000 deficit.
Trustee Jim Lino said a first reading of new board policy language around benefits would take place at the July meeting. But any changes would not alter benefits in the midst of a board member’s term; instead, if benefits were cut, they would sunset as the terms for trustees expire.
For Ms. Monserrat, benefits are not the only policy that needs to change. Last Thursday, she noted a number of practices that do not conform with policies: the absence of topics brought up in public comments from board minutes; blank spaces in the manual, such as how many terms trustees can serve; and that residents vote for all trustees, though the policy says they only vote for the trustee representing their area. (There are three areas in the district.) “The policies need to be accurate,” she said.
Ms. Faure advocated for yet another policy revision: clear rules on board meeting schedules, an issue that has spurred some disagreement over whether there is any “center” of a district that spans a lengthy stretch of coast, from Inverness to Bodega Bay.
Board meetings typically rotate between four schools: Bodega Bay, Tomales High, Tomales Elementary and West Marin. Though about 60 percent of families live closer to Tomales and Bodega Bay, and 40 percent are closer to West Marin and Inverness Schools, she said, three-quarters of regular meetings in the past year have been held either in Tomales or Bodega Bay. That travel time isn’t easy on families; Ms. Faure calculated that it takes 55 minutes to travel the more than 30 mile-journey from Inverness to Bodega Bay.
In a paper she handed out at the meeting, Ms. Faure proposed three options to address the discrepancy: that the meeting schedule reflect the 60-40 split; that meetings take place in a “true central meeting point,” such as the Marconi Conference Center; or that they be telecast.
Some trustees and one Bodega Bay staffer seemed to disagree with her assessment of what is central: instead, seeing West Marin School as the southern hub, they view Tomales—about 30 or so minutes from that school and a little under half an hour from Bodega Bay School—as central.
The July board meeting will, like last week’s meeting, take place at West Marin School. The meeting schedule will be on the agenda.