MDUSD - Mt. Diablo Unified School District Blog

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Given all of the questions and accusations that I have seen swirling around the school closure issue, I wanted to provide the rationale that I applied when asking the Board to consider removing option 3 (Sequoia El, Sequoia MS, and Monte Gardens) from consideration.The reasons are three and they really paint a clear picture:1. The cost to outfit campuses with additional classrooms that will receive returning students from the three closing schools is estimated to be $3.5 million. It makes no sense to close three schools to save $1.5 million only to spend $3.5 million doing so.2. Due to the fact that we would have to construct about 16 new classrooms to implement this option, we would not be able to implement the scenario on time. The lead time to get the classrooms designed, through the Office of State Architecture, and actually built would preclude implementation by the 2011-2012 school year which fails to meet the objective of saving $1.5 million in the first year of implementation.3. The three schools in option 3 are among the highest performing schools in the District. Actually they are very high performing as compared to all schools in the County or even the State. There is no way that I can rationalize closing our highest performing programs to cut costs.Given the rationale above, I cannot vote to close these schools. It has nothing to do with favoring certain schools over others. My mind was not made up prior to attending the meeting. I have spent hours wading through all of the data that has been assembled. When you sit with the results of the study that has been done, when you look at the recommendations that the committee made, when you look at the votes that they cast, scenarios 1 and 2 look rational.If the Board believes that one of the scenarios is unworkable, I believe it is better to speak up and let the community know so that people are not wasting their time advocating for or against a scenario that is not possible to implement. I also think we need to give the Superintendent accurate direction so that he can spend all of his time working on viable solutions that will help solve the challenges that we will face rather than wasting his time on scenarios that I think will never come to fruition.For those of you that were in attendance Wednesday night, you saw the Board ask questions about alternative uses for the schools that may close. The reason for that is to see if we can close fewer schools, reformat the schools that do close to allow other programs to be moved into those sites which may allow us to save more money and allow us to close 2 schools rather than 3. That is another reason that I wanted to remove the scenario that I believe doesn't stand a chance of selection, to provide the Superintendent and his staff the opportunity to spend time focusing on finding solutions that will work.It's easy to criticize the decisions of the committee. I am willing to bet that most who are criticizing have not looked at the data. I know it is difficult to spend the time reading all of the material, studying it and really thinking about how you would deal with the problem if you were a committee member. I will give one example. I have seen criticism of the selection of Glenbrook rather than Oak Grove. I think both schools could have been put forward. When scored side by side relative to the criteria, the two schools score very close. When you actually study the two options side by side, it becomes very evident that closing Oak Grove would be extremely difficult to do. The middle schools that Oak Grove is closest to are Foothill, Pleasant Hill, and Glenbrook. Those three schools couldn't accept all of the students from Oak Grove without major construction on each of the campuses or we could shift the boundaries of Foothill and Pleasant Hill Middle Schools. The ripple effect of shifting the boundaries of Foothill and Pleasant Hill Middle Schools would be extreme and very difficult to deal with. There is another consideration that is worthwhile to point out. Oak Grove receives QEIA dollars and those dollars depend on Oak Grove staying open. If Oak Grove closes, the QEIA dollars will not follow the students, the dollars will simply disappear from the district. Glenbrook receives SIG dollars and those dollars are not site dependent and will follow the students if the school is closed. So when you actually sit down and look at the materials that we have to study, rational recommendations can and have been made that are based on objective criteria.Closing any school is devastating. Each of the schools that are being considered is extremely important to the parents, teachers, staff, and most importantly, the students that attend. Each of these schools address the educational needs of their students in different ways in order to meet the specific needs of the students who attend. We shouldn't be in this position, but the State of California and the politicians who rule the State have not made education a priority. When you couple the State's unwillingness to provide adequate funding and the fact that our District, like most districts in the State, is dealing with the affects of declining enrollment, closing schools is an unwelcome necessity.My goal is to narrow the choices as soon as possible so that the Superintendent has clear direction. Scenario three is not an option and I don't want to spend the valuable time of our staff and, most importantly, our community on scenarios that are not feasible. When I asked the Board if there was consensus around removing scenario 3 from consideration, there was not unanimous support to do so. We have a history in our district of respecting the concerns of each Board Member, so despite the fact that it appeared that there was support to remove the scenario from consideration, I suggested that we not do so on January 19. 2011.I'd like to make one additional comment and that is about the latest accusation that members of the committee were conflicted in their ability to make fair and balanced decisions based on what's best for all students. I have even seen an accusation that a member of the committee has control over 8 members of the committee. I know a few of the members of the committee because over the years they have served on many committees on behalf of the students of our District. These individuals are above reproach and if they thought for a moment that there were members on the committee who were attempting to serve personal interests, they would have immediately cried foul. It is impossible to assemble a committee which is completely without interests that conflict. Each member comes to the committee with interests, parent, grand parent, business owner, home owner, relative, etc. It's not like people came out of the wood work when the District invited volunteers to meet weekly for hours, to study reams of data, to listen to hours of consultant presentation and instruction, to make extremely important decisions, and now to be criticized irrationally by people who are too busy or uninterested to study the data for themselves. Even after selecting 32 members for the committee, only 24 made it to the end. This was not easy work. So when criticizing the work of the committee or the make up of the committee, please start your comment with a recitation or the data that supports your belief that a bad recommendation was reached.To review the materials that the school closure advisory committee have reviewed and created, click HERE.To view the power point presentation from January 19, 2011, click HEREThe Board of Education will discuss this topic at our January 25, 2011 Board meeting and we should be in a position to make a final decision at our February 8, 2011 Board meeting. Public comment will be accepted at both Board meetings.January 24, 2011 Update:After a lengthy meeting this evening trying to gain a better understanding of some of the site budgets that we are dealing with, I want to correct a partial factual error that I made. The error relates to QEIA and SIP funding at Oak Grove and Glenbrook. I was correct when I stated that QEIA funding would not follow students if Oak Grove were closed. I can also take it one step farther and report that if students are moved into Oak Grove, the QEIA funding would increase on a per pupil basis. The partial error that I made relates to the SIP funding that Glenbrook receives. There are two pots of SIP dollars; the first are the district SIP dollars and there are also SIP site dollars. If Glenbrook is closed and the students go to other schools, the district will continue to receive district SIP dollars but will cease to receive the SIP site dollars if the school is closed. What does hold true is that if Oak Grove were closed we would lose many more dollars than if Glenbrook were closed. This is just one more indication that the ways that school districts are funded are extremely complex and difficult to manage. I do want to ensure that I am providing accurate information.postCount('boescac');

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