School Board Candidates

by Jack McCurdy

Synopsis: Two candidates for election to the San Luis Coastal Unified School District school board from the Los Osos-Morro Bay area have been endorsed by the San Luis Coastal Teachers Association at the November 2 election. The board faces continuing unstable funding of its 15 schools and services for 7,200 students.

Jim Quesenberry and Kathryn Eisendrath-Rogers have been endorsed for election to the San Luis Coastal Unified School District Board of Education on November 2 by the San Luis Coastal Teachers Association at a time when state funding of public schools is highly uncertain and the 15-school system faces a precarious financial future, along with other state school districts. 

The teachers group did not endorse incumbent Marilyn Rodger because she declined to meet with association representatives to discuss the issues in the board election, Bruce Badrigian, president of the association, said.

Quesenberry, Rogers, and Rodger are running for two open seats in Trustee Area Two on the board, which covers Los Osos and Morro Bay.

Incumbents Mark Buchman and Ellen Sheffer are the only two candidates for two open seats in Trustee Area One on the board, which means they are automatically elected. That area covers the city of San Luis Obispo, Avila Beach, a portion of Pismo Beach (north of Spyglass and west of Hwy 101) and the unincorporated areas between those communities.

Phil Angel and Walter Miller in Area One and Chris Ungar in Area Two are board members whose terms are not up yet.

The seven-member board has four members from Area One and three from Area two.

In addition to the 15 pre-kindergarten to secondary schools, which serve about 7,200 students with some 406 teachers, the district has an adult school, 320 support staff and 36 administrative staff, its website says. The number of teachers includes special education and other specialist teachers.

The average class sizes in the district are 22.1 for kindergarten, 22.1 for grades one through three, 29.1 for fourth through sixth grade and 29.1 for grades seven through 12, Rick Robinett, assistant superintendent for personnel and educational services, reported.

The large majority of education scholars believe that class size is a key—if not the most important—factor in determining student performance. The district's average class sizes are up slightly over last year, Robinett said. 

"Our school district has declined in the number of students over the last five years," he said.  "We staff according to a student-to-teacher ratio, not according to whether or not we are going to replace retirees.  We have traditionally had between 10 and 20 teacher retirements over each of those years.  Because we have had more teachers retire than student decline, we have not had to institute any layoffs. Over those years we added counseling staff, added school nursing, and transferred programs from the County Office of Education, so our actual certificated staff has actually grown."

The district determined that if it purposely did not replace a certain number of retirees and allowed class sizes to edge up a small amount, Robinett said, it could save some money and ended up not replacing 11 full-time-equivalent teachers and saving over $800,000.  "This is why our class sizes are up a bit," he said.  "Still, we have just as many certificated employees today as we did five years ago because we have enriched some of our programs (music, counseling, nursing, special education, etc)."

Badrigian said the real class sizes in classrooms are actually higher than the district figures show. The district, he said, "may be counting teachers who do not even have regular classes; that would drop the averages quickly. You can go to any school and ask teachers what their class sizes are--the numbers are not that small."

The district has a roughly a $70 million budget, Robinett said, which reflects modest increases over the last five years. But it has not kept up with ongoing costs or continuing rising costs (required increases under teacher salary schedules, fuel costs, health benefits, etc)."

Badrigian said one of the direct impacts of the failure of funding to keep up with district needs is lack of any salary increase for teachers and other employees last year, at the same time that health insurance premiums for employees have increased markedly, and Robinett concurred.

"We have slashed our budget for the 2010-11 year by approximately $3 million in anticipation of a worsening state budget, which we still don't have from Sacramento, Robinett said." That's because the state Legislature has been unable to adopt a budget. He noted that the district relies primarily on local property tax revenue, and property assessments are coming in much lower than last year, meaning lower tax revenues. In light of this uncertainty, the board has adopted a larger budget reserve, he said.

Actually, the district, being what is called a "basic aid" district, which means it relies mostly on property taxes for its operating revenues, has had to "give back to the state considerable dollars" in state aid it is entitled do, and property tax revenue has not offset those losses. 

" I think a combination of a steady stream of retirees, a declining enrollment, three school closures and consolidation of resources a number of years ago, a prudent and conservative board that doesn't get too influenced by 'feast and famine' budgeting (spending huge amounts or giving huge raises in times of plenty, or making deep slashes when times get tough), and the mere fact of having a slightly more predictable cash flow when the state is so obviously not able to take charge of its budget has kept us in a pretty good place." Relative to most other districts, anyway.