Celebrating our Students and Preparing for the Future

It is always wonderful to spend the second week of June celebrating the promotion of our 5th graders to middle school and our 8th graders to high school.  They have such pride as they walk across the stage to collect their certificates, knowing that they have much to look forward to in life.  Their futures are even brighter now that Governor Brown and the California legislature have agreed on a budget that finally treats education as a top priority.

Last week's state budget includes an exciting new method for funding K-12 schools in California.  The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) gives local school districts more flexibility on how money is spent and allocates higher levels of funding for school districts with large numbers of disadvantaged students, including English-language learners, foster youth, and those from low-income households.  The final budget includes a higher base grant than the Governor had proposed in May, and helps get schools on track to recover to pre-recession funding levels.  The budget also includes $4 billion to pay back deferrals owed to school districts, along with $1.25 billion in one-time funding to support the implementation of Common Core standards, which schools must implement in 2014. 

What does all this mean for the Berryessa School District?  We are still waiting to get the final numbers, but this week the Board approved a budget that includes income that is more than $2.5 million above the level from 2012-2013.  Once all the additional funding added this month by the legislature is taken into account, there could be another $1 million in income for our district.  

The budget is good news, and means that we can begin to rebuild the programs that have been cut to the bone over the past decade.  The Board will reconvene on July 16 to review (with our new Assistant Superintendent of Fiscal Services) the updated budget numbers and begin to discuss our priorities for adding services that are so desperately needed in our schools.

One thing is clear.  Our teachers must get a raise so that they can be adequately compensated for the tremendous work they do and so that our district can remain competitive with others in our region.  I am confident that we will find a way to provide a salary increase for all our staff in the coming year.  I also look forward to having discussions on making sure we have adequate support in the following areas: counseling services; in-school suspension programs in our middle schools; campus security; custodial and maintenance support; library services; and modern information technology.

I am very pleased that we took a modest but important step this week to improve customer service in our school offices by instructing the district to add an hour of time to our school clerks.  It is our secretaries and clerks that serve as the public face of our schools, manage all school data, deal with children and parents who come into the office, and help students who are injured or sick.  Our schools have been understaffed for that past few years as a result of our need to very conservatively manage our district's budget.

I hope everyone enjoys their summer.  The Board will be hard at work to make sure the district is prepared to provide the best education possible in the coming school year.