WEST CONTRA COSTA Unified Faculty District is on the cusp of a brand new and unsure period following the retirement of its superintendent, Chris Hurst, who stepped down in December after simply over three years on the job.
Whoever is chosen to completely change him will face a frightening set of considerations, together with making certain that the district will not be positioned beneath state management. For now that job is within the palms of interim Superintendent Kim Moses, who till December was the district’s affiliate superintendent for enterprise companies.
With an enrollment of just below 30,000 college students, greater than half from low-income households, the district includes 54 colleges in El Cerrito, Richmond and different East Bay communities within the San Francisco Bay Space.
Chief among the many points the district faces are declining enrollment, persistent funds deficits, a sluggish enchancment in post-COVID take a look at scores, instructor shortages, and assembly the a number of wants of a various and largely low-income pupil physique, together with a sometimes-contentious faculty board not at all times in alignment with its superintendent.
To a higher or lesser extent, these are issues dealing with many city districts throughout California, together with some bigger neighbors across the Bay Space.
San Francisco Unified additionally received a brand new superintendent final month and is grappling with extreme funds deficits and intense stress to shut colleges.
Whereas Oakland Unified’s superintendent, Kyla Johnson-Trammell, continues to be in her job after seven years, surviving a instructor strike, the pandemic, and different travails, the district is coping with related profound challenges. Each San Francisco and Oakland additionally face the prospect of a state takeover.
On Jan. 8, at West Contra Costa’s first board assembly of 2025, Moses issued a blunt warning about the necessity to make additional funds cuts to keep away from insolvency.
After making $19 million in cuts through the present yr, the district nonetheless has a “significant structural deficit,” she stated, and warned that beneath present eventualities, its funds reserves “will be exhausted within three years.”
With out additional reductions within the subsequent two faculty years, the district could be “placed under (state) receivership, which means we’ll no longer be in charge of making financial decisions for our district,” she stated.
Making an attempt to keep away from a repeat of historical past
In 1991, the district had the unlucky distinction of being the first within the state to go bancrupt. To rescue it, the district obtained a $29 million bailout mortgage, which took 21 years to repay. Now it’s attempting to move off the same destiny.
In December, the West Contra Costa faculty board handed a funds that members stated met the usual to obtain a “positive certification,” which beneath state laws means it will not spend its complete reserve over the following three years.
However the county workplace of training has refused to approve that certification with out the district offering a multiyear deficit-reduction plan. That’s what Moses offered to the board on Wednesday evening, involving cuts of $7 million subsequent yr, and an extra $6 million the next yr.
Declining enrollment — by 8% over the previous 4 years alone — is maybe West Contra Costa’s main concern, in line with Michael High-quality, CEO of California’s Fiscal Disaster and Administration Help Group, an company created by the state to assist districts resolve monetary and administration issues.
High-quality largely attributes the decline — which is mirrored in lots of different districts, and the state as an entire — to decrease start charges.
“It’s a long-term problem” for colleges, he stated. “Right now, schools are feeling it most in kindergarten and elementary school. In 10 years, it will be middle school, then high school.”
The issue interprets instantly into cash. In California, colleges have a wide range of sources of funds, however they’re based totally on “average daily attendance,” that’s, the variety of youngsters within the classroom every day. In 2022-23, the district obtained practically $24,000 per pupil from numerous sources, most of it from the state primarily based on precise attendance, in line with Ed-Information.
As enrollment declines — both via decrease start charges or households leaving the costly Bay Space — so, too, does the district’s revenues. One other issue decreasing revenue is the top of the federal authorities’s Elementary and Secondary Faculty Emergency Reduction fund, designed to assist with Covid-19 restoration. The fund introduced the district some $53 million by 2023.
All of which has had an impact on West Contra Costa Unified’s funds.
‘Your revenue is going away’
One method the district is analyzing to cut back its deficit is so-called “purpose-based budgeting.” The tactic, designed to extra tightly management bills, is to guage how effectively particular funds match the district’s priorities.
However that might not be sufficient.
“Look, I understand. No one joins a school board to lay off people,” High-quality says. “But your revenue is going away, and they’re overstaffed compared to their enrollment.”
However Francisco Ortiz, president of United Lecturers of Richmond, the union representing lecturers, says there are already too many unfilled positions in West Contra Costa, and the district can’t afford to save lots of extra by additional decreasing workers.
“Lots of school boards say cut as far away from the classroom as you can, but when you have declining enrollment, you cut at the classroom level. But it’s really tough. It’s difficult as heck. It is horrendous.”
Michael High-quality, CEO of California’s Fiscal Disaster and Administration Help Group
“In secondary schools alone, we have 27 vacant FTEs — full-time equivalent (positions),” he says. “And in elementary, it’s 30.8 vacancies and 22 in special ed. The majority of these folks are teachers, some counselors, in elementary, but the majority are classroom teachers.” Most colleges, he stated, have to make use of substitutes every day.
On the board assembly final week, interim Superintendent Moses argued that growing pupil attendance and enrollment is the one real looking strategy to scale back the district’s deficits with out making additional cuts. For each 1% improve in attendance, the district would generate $2.75 million in further state funding. To that finish, the district is launching what it calls its “Why We Show Up” marketing campaign. “It’s really cut and dried,” Moses stated. “We only get revenue based upon the number of children we have in a seat.”
Ultimately week’s board assembly, many dad and mom and lecturers expressed considerations that there could be cuts in district choices like its Worldwide Baccalaureate and bilingual and twin immersion packages.
However Moses tried to reassure the college neighborhood that no packages could be lower. An enormous chunk of reductions she is proposing would come from central workplace reductions, transferring lecturers out of lecture rooms with small numbers of scholars, and so forth.
The West Contra Costa Unified Faculty District Board of Schooling meets on Jan. 8, 2025, in a framegrab from video. The board and its interim Superintendent Kim Moses face troublesome choices about what and the place to chop from the district’s funds to stay solvent and keep away from a possible state takeover. (WCCUSD through YouTube)
A part of the issue, union chief Ortiz says, is that the district has finished a poor job of budgeting for what number of lecturers it would want annually. As for overlaying the district’s deficit — to pay for extra lecturers — he says the district ought to draw additional on its reserve. “The reserve is for a rainy day, and right now it’s flooding. Our most vulnerable students are the ones receiving the blunt end of this. Cutting classroom teachers is not the answer.”
However FCMAT’s High-quality argues that must be a part of the equation. “Lots of school boards say cut as far away from the classroom as you can, but when you have declining enrollment, you cut at the classroom level. But it’s really tough. It’s difficult as heck. It is horrendous.”
Re-credentialing lecturers the place they’re wanted
High-quality argues that the difficulty of instructor vacancies is a nuanced one, and that there could also be potential options. There might, for instance, be too many English lecturers and never sufficient math lecturers, or too many PE lecturers and never sufficient particular training lecturers. He means that districts contemplate providing packages to re-credential lecturers, though this isn’t a short-term technique.
“The solution doesn’t work for everyone, but why don’t we pay, say English teachers, to get credentialed to teach the sixth grade? Or invest in someone to get a special ed credential?”
Earlier than his departure, outgoing superintendent Hurst outlined a number of of the district’s current accomplishments in his State of Our District report — a reminder that placing all the eye on funds can obscure progress in different areas.
Amongst these is the return to 100% in-person studying within the district after the pandemic. One other is “improved staff recruitment, development and retention,” with instructor vacancies declining from 143 two years in the past to 64 within the present faculty yr.
Check scores have additionally improved considerably within the district, in line with outcomes of the Smarter Balanced assessments college students took final spring, although they nonetheless lag statewide averages, and, like nearly all districts within the state, usually are not but as much as pre-pandemic ranges.
The board not too long ago employed David Hart as chief enterprise supervisor, no less than via the rest of the college yr. He’s the extremely regarded former chief monetary officer of the huge Los Angeles Unified, a district 20 occasions the scale of West Contra Costa. High-quality is hopeful Hart’s expertise with a vastly extra advanced district will speed up the district’s path to restoration.
“They are hiring a very skilled interim CBO,” he stated. “I hope they listen to him.”
Louis Freedberg contributed to this report.
This story initially appeared in EdSource.
