(BCN/EdSource) — West Contra Costa Unified College 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 substitute him will face a frightening set of considerations, together with making certain that the district shouldn’t 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 slightly below 30,000 college students, greater than half from low-income households, the district contains 54 faculties in El Cerrito, Richmond and different East Bay communities within the San Francisco Bay Space.
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Chief among the many points the district faces are declining enrollment, persistent price range deficits, a sluggish enchancment in post-Covid take a look at scores, trainer shortages, and assembly the a number of wants of a various and largely low-income scholar physique, together with a sometimes-contentious college board not at all times in alignment with its superintendent.
To a higher or lesser extent, these are issues going through many city districts throughout California, together with some bigger neighbors across the Bay Space.
San Francisco Unified additionally obtained a brand new superintendent final month and is grappling with extreme price range deficits and intense stress to shut faculties.
Whereas Oakland Unified’s superintendent, Kyla Johnson-Trammell, remains to be in her job after seven years, surviving a trainer 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 .
Final Wednesday, at West Contra Costa’s first board assembly of 2025, Moses issued a blunt warning about the necessity to make additional price range cuts to keep away from insolvency.
After making $19 million in cuts in the course of the present 12 months, the district nonetheless has a “significant structural deficit,” she mentioned, and warned that beneath present situations, its price range reserves “will be exhausted within three years.”
With out additional reductions within the subsequent two college 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 mentioned.
In 1991, the district had the unlucky distinction of being the primary within the state to go bancrupt. To rescue it, the district acquired a $29 million bailout mortgage, which took 21 years to repay. Now it’s making an attempt to go off an analogous destiny.
In December, the West Contra Costa college board handed a price range that members mentioned met the usual to obtain a “positive certification,” which beneath state rules means it could not spend its total reserve over the following three years.
However the county workplace of schooling 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 night time, involving cuts of $7 million subsequent 12 months, and a further $6 million the next 12 months.
Declining enrollment — by 8% over the previous 4 years alone — is maybe West Contra Costa’s major concern, based on Michael Nice, CEO of California’s Fiscal Disaster and Administration Help Group, created by the state to assist districts resolve monetary and administration issues.
Nice attributes the decline, which is mirrored in lots of different districts, and the state as an entire, largely to decrease beginning charges.
“It’s a long-term problem” for faculties, he mentioned. “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 straight into cash. In California, faculties have quite a lot of sources of funds, however they’re largely based mostly on “average daily attendance,” that’s, the variety of children within the classroom. In 2022-23, the district acquired practically $24,000 per scholar from varied sources, most of it from the state based mostly on precise attendance, based on Ed-Information.
As enrollment declines — both via decrease beginning charges or households leaving the costly Bay Space — so, too, does the district’s revenues. One other issue lowering revenue is the tip of the federal authorities’s Elementary and Secondary College Emergency Aid 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 price range.
One strategy the district is analyzing to scale back its deficit is so-called “purpose-based budgeting.” The strategy, 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,” Nice says. “But your revenue is going away, and they’re overstaffed compared to their enrollment.”
However Francisco Ortiz, president of United Academics of Richmond, the union representing academics, says there are already too many unfilled positions in West Contra Costa, and the district can not afford to avoid wasting extra by additional lowering workers.
“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 mentioned, have to make use of substitutes each day.
On the board assembly this week, interim Superintendent Moses argued that rising scholar attendance and enrollment is the one sensible technique to scale back the district’s deficits with out making additional cuts. For each 1% improve in attendance, the district would generate $2.35 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 mentioned. “We only get revenue based upon the number of children we have in a seat.”
Eventually week’s board assembly, many dad and mom and academics expressed considerations that there could be cuts in district choices like its Worldwide Baccalaureate and bilingual and twin immersion applications.
However Moses tried to reassure the college group that no applications could be minimize. A giant chunk of reductions she is proposing would come from central workplace reductions, shifting academics out of lecture rooms with small numbers of scholars, –and so on.
A part of the issue, union chief Ortiz says, is that the district has finished a poor job of budgeting for what number of academics it’s going to want annually. As for overlaying the district’s deficit — to pay for extra academics — 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 Nice 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 enrollment, you cut at the classroom level. But it’s really tough. It’s difficult as heck. It is horrendous.”
Nice argues that the difficulty of trainer vacancies is a nuanced one, and that there could also be doable options. There might, for instance, could also be too many English academics and never sufficient math academics, or too many PE academics and never sufficient particular schooling academics. He means that districts contemplate providing applications to re-credential academics, 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 trainer vacancies declining from 143 two years in the past to 64 within the present college 12 months.
Check scores have additionally improved considerably within the district, based on outcomes on the Smarter Balanced assessments college students took final spring, although they nonetheless lag statewide averages, and, like nearly all districts within the state, aren’t but as much as pre-pandemic ranges.
The board not too long ago employed David Hart as chief enterprise supervisor, at the very least via the rest of the college 12 months. He is the extremely regarded former chief monetary officer of the large Los Angeles Unified, a district 20 occasions the scale of West Contra Costa. Nice is hopeful Hart’s expertise with a vastly extra complicated district will speed up the district’s path to restoration. “They are hiring a very skilled interim CBO,” he mentioned. “I hope they listen to him.”
Louis Freedberg contributed to this report.
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