December 17, 2004

‘Changing the culture of the district’

ESUHSD’s Budget Task Force continues efforts to
remedy district’s financial woes

By Mariecar Mendoza
Staff Writer

With Yerba Buena High School as its backdrop, the public portion of the three-part process of the “vetting of the numbers” concluded Dec. 7 for this year’s East Side Union High School District Budget Task Force.

According to J. Manuel Herrera, the ESUHSD Budget Task Force chair and president of the board of trustees, it is the process of “looking at the books” and figuring out the basis of the districts’ revenues and expenses to understand the scope of the district’s deficit.

The meeting began at 7 p.m. with Herrera bringing the modest crowd of parents, teachers and other district employees up to speed on the district’s budget crisis.

“We put the entire educational oversight system, which is the county and the state, on notice that they must pay closer attention to us because we are headed in a direction that is prohibited by law – we cannot have a budget as unbalanced as this,” explained Herrera.

The first interim report for 2004-2005, defining the nature of the problem, went to the county on Dec. 15. (To review the final draft of the interim budget report, go to www.esuhsd.org)

The second report, due March 15, will explain the revenue and expenses of the district through the end of January and will accurately report what the district has done to begin addressing the problem identified in the first interim report.

“There really isn’t any more wiggle room here. If we do not take the necessary steps and report what we’re doing in the March 15 report for our activity through the end of January, the oversight system—by law—will kick in and we will gradually go into the direction that is called a receivership,” Herrera said.

“The worst case scenario is that they’ll take over the administration of the district and they will make the budget decisions,” he added.

Herrera also stressed that if a receivership does happen, the oversight system will not be sympathetic to any person, program, cause or organization.

“Obviously there is no reason to go in that direction when it is in our power to assess the nature of our challenge and come together on some solutions,” he said.

With that statement as an opener, sitting among a panel of key players—board members Craig Mann and Lan Nguyen; Frank Biehl, president of the Evergreen Valley High School site council; Bernie Olmos, one of three directors of Oak Grove High School; Don McKell, president of the East Side Union Teachers Association (ESTA); Filberto Zamora, president of the California School Employees Association (CSEA) and the night’s Spanish translator; and Elena Sanchez, second vice president of the CSEA—Herrera invited students, teachers, parents and anyone else interested in the audience to come on stage to represent their school and/or program.

He said by January there would be a more specific list of school site council members and stakeholders who would participate in the panel to be the “voice of service programs,” but until then, volunteers for the night would suffice.

Representing the district’s 11 schools—from Yerba Buena, James Lick and Piedmont to Mount Pleasant, Silver Creek and Evergreen Valley High School—the crowd and the panel attempted to utilize the two-hour meeting to summarize the district’s first interim report.

First interim report
Jack Mahrt, the district’s chief financial officer, led the presentation of the draft of the first interim report. He started the presentation by explaining who he, Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas and the rest of the cabinet members have been working with since the adoption of the district’s budget in June 2003.

First bringing in the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), which has worked with various districts in Vallejo and Oakland, to help review the budget, Mahrt said Zendejas and the cabinet has been trying to be proactive about balancing the budget.

He also said they brought in the Santa Clara County Office of Education to help review the budget and have been meeting with them on a regular basis to let them know about the ESUHSD’s financial condition.

“We don’t want the Santa Clara County Office of Education to take over the district nor do we want them to turn us over to the state of California, so that’s why we’re trying to get ahead of the game to solve our own problems,” said Mahrt.

Despite efforts to thoroughly explain each page in a 42-page booklet and a second 13-page handout, Mahrt was not able to fully condense the information that night for many concerned attendees. However, during the meeting he was able to clear up, or at least shed light on, a few issues.

“It often takes a crisis situation to take out a magnifying glass and see these things,” said Herrera.

However, even after the two-hour meeting, some people left worn out by all the number crunching and still uncertain of the districts’ financial future.

In fact, board member Nguyen suggested a follow-up meeting open to the public before the report’s due date and before the board’s exclusive meeting set for Dec. 14. That interim meeting, which was granted—by popular demand—and held at the district office Dec. 13, further explained topics of the Dec. 7 meeting.

Of course, voicing what several attendees had on their mind, Mann said, “We don’t need another meeting; we need answers.”

Frustrated employees seek accountability
Don Dawson, a math teacher at Silver Creek High School, stood up to the microphone several times expressing his thoughts on the presentation of the budget break-down.

“I’m rather frustrated by this explanation. Last night when we asked our questions we thought that we’d be getting a far more detailed response. But I don’t need to be looking at the unrestricted dollars and hear how it all gets divided up,” said Dawson.

“We’re talking about restricted dollars, and there’s a pattern that happens from year to year. And if you want to show us what happens [with] the budget as a historical pattern that would be helpful, but we’re not hearing that either,” he added.

Esther DeLaRosa, Yerba Buena High School’s librarian department chair, also stepped to the microphone to make a passionate speech.

“I’ve been through this kind of stuff before, but one thing that bothers me this time—and like I said this is not new to me—is that this stinks! The people who got us here should be a part of the solution. That’s what is bothering me the most. We keep hearing that we have a problem and that we need to fix it—but damn, how about the people who got us here?” said DeLaRosa, who has been with the school for 33 years.

“We’re the ones who have to live with what happened, but what about them?” she continued. “Do they get to just walk away? Whoever these people are, I don’t know how they can just walk away from this and leave us with this mess.”

In response, Herrera could only say that the district no longer employs those who were involved with the budget before and they have no legal merit to get them to help with the balancing of the budget.

New administration, culture
But to fan the flames, Zendejas stepped in to acknowledge everyone’s frustration and reassure the crowd that she and her cabinet are trying their best to balance the budget as well as repair the administration.

“What we’re doing is also changing the culture of the district,” she said. “We would be more than happy to make this more simple, but again, I hope people understand that we’re going to change the culture of how we do business.”

Board member Mann later made efforts to assure that the audience would leave the meeting with the knowledge that Zendejas and her cabinet are making the best out of the situation that they were put in.

“Dr. Zendejas has been with us for a little over a year now and she has inherited a barge of garbage … and she is slowly but surely acting to clear that barge and has put together a crack team of cabinet members to do so,” said Mann as he signaled for the audience to give the cabinet a round of applause.

“She inherited a culture of fuzzy math [and] fuzzy ethics, and that former culture was not always honest … but now we have someone with high integrity, high character, high degrees of ethics that’s telling the truth, and the truth is really startling right now,” he added.

At the close of the meeting, Mann said, “We have an open and transparent [program] here, and transparency where there wasn’t transparency before can be shocking, but just hold on. We’re going to get through this together.”

The next step in the ESUHSD’s budget is scheduled for January, when stakeholders can make their presentations about thoughts on budget priorities. In February, the Budget Task Force will explore possible budget cutting scenarios and forward recommendations to the board in March and April.