Lost in the story about the Santa Ana Unified School District’s $2 million mistake is a tale that could end just as badly.
I met a group of students at this week’s SAUSD board meeting who were protesting because of threats from the district to cancel next year’s music and arts elective classes at three intermediate schools, Willard, Spurgeon and Sierra.
Apparently SAUSD administrators would rather focus on spending class time on “Language Arts,” which we used to call English, and Math. They are desperate to raise API scores and don’t see any value in music or the arts.
That this is happening in a city with an artist’s village is ironic and possibly tragic. The good news is that the district has not made a decision yet. Now is the time to complain to the district and to the school board members.
The irony is compounded by the recent spate of gang killings in Santa Ana. Kids just don’t have a lot of other avenues open to them in this city. They have one library, where they ought to have a half dozen. This past summer only the high school kids were able to participate in summer school. Our parks are crowded and insufficient. It is a sad state of affairs – made all the sadder if the music stops on account of the inept SAUSD administrators.
I found a website that makes the following claims about students who take music lessons:
Research has shown that children who are actively involved in music (who play it or sing it regularly):
- Do better in reading
- Learn coordination, goal-setting, concentration, and cooperation
- Are more likely to do better in math and science because music helps build reasoning skills and cognitive development, which are important to both
- Get along better with their peers and have higher self-esteem
- Are more likely to go to college
Who knew? Those sure sound like positives for the children of Santa Ana. Why would the SAUSD administrators even CONSIDER cutting music and the arts? What would families in Irvine and Newport Beach do if their school districts tried something like this?
If the district administrators actually were complying with class size reduction, we might see better results from the current Language Arts and Math classes. And if they hired more credentialed teachers to teach Math, the results would likely improve right away.
Instead, the SAUSD administrators are thinking of cutting off their right hands to spite their arms. Unbelievable. Or maybe not surprising. Will any good decisions ever come from SAUSD Superintendent Jane Russo? I’m still waiting.
UPDATE:
I did find out one bit of good news at this week’s school board meeting. As the O.C. Register put it, “Twenty-nine middle school students from Santa Ana Unified have been chosen to participate in a program that places them in prestigious preparatory academies across the country.”
“The A Better Chance program will send the students next fall to top boarding schools in states including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The program places students with scholarships that pay the full four-year tuition, room and boarding costs for every student, equaling about $5 million.”
Congratulations to the participating students! I wonder how many of them are involved in music and art programs at their schools?
I was at the SAUSD meeting. The Santa Ana HS girls’ stories were tear jerkers. It brought back good and bad memories of the hood.
Good … I was involved in extracurricular activities to get away from the bad. Imagine one of the girls said, she would of been dead already, if it not were for her replying with, “I have band practice,” for everytime after school she was asked to join a gang.
SAUSD Mother
Would it be because Villa Fundamental is next to the SAUSD Headquarters?! Hmmmmm Everyone at Villa Fundamental is involved, wished all of the SAUSD Principals, staff and the members of the SAUSD Education Board were as involved and proactive as Villa Fundamental staff! ;(
Art…put a second mortgage on your house, pull your kids out of SAUSD and get them a real education in a private school!!!!
All future program cuts should start w/ Villa first. Everyone knows that only the influential and the favored students go there.
I have yet to hear where the administrative cuts will be. This top heavy organization is choking the life out of the students’ programs.
I wish this year’s lot of ABC receipients the best of luck as they pursue their academic dreams.
Meanwhile, it’s a bit sad that SAUSD is losing all this talent to other educational institutions.
Just to make the story a shade less straight-forward … 🙂
Our local elementary school (Foothill Ranch) has an “Art Masters” program. The PTA has is some(?) years come up with funding. Sounds great to the parents.
Cut to a conversation between four teenage boys riding back from school in my car. “Remember the Art Masters classes?” My son got in trouble once for choosing to by creative (good for him!), rather than exactly copying the style of Van Gogh. Turns out they all hated the class.
What sounds good to parents may not be quite the same to the kids. 🙂
Preston, Are you any kin to former H.B. Mayor Wes Banister?
What’s the data on the top-heavyness of the SAUSD? How does it compare with other comparable districts in Cali and/or in the nation? Has anyone studies the proportion of funds that go to students, to faculty, to staff, to admin.? Somebody must have. Are our admin folks paid obscenely better than elsewhere? How much would be saved by cuts? Would that solve our problems?
Lastly, I don’t see enough credit given the teachers union in all this squabble over the fraudulent rosters and subsequent penalties. The union made it possible for these teachers to report the abuses. Without it, you would not know. And that is part of what unions are for, eh?
Anyone else ever notice how negative this school district is?
Always taking things away from the students. You never hear of any programs and projects really being built up to great proportions.
The same old leaders are stingy and shortsighted. The best parts of education are the first to be tossed out.
How the tax skim scam works:
That huge cash surplus in the SAUSD budget will largely be skimmed into one of several “investment accounts” managed by the OC Treasuer’s Department from which the Department skims tens of millions in “management fees.” Funneling the tax money skimmed from educating kids into county government earned a certain person a reputation as the “financial savior” of Orange County. So, don’t expect the Register to help you on this because the Register’s favorite county politician might be revealed to be less than perfect.
The Treasurer’s Department then places the money with politically favored brokerages. The brokers reap millions in fees from “churning” the money in “bottom feeder” and house accounts, which increases the brokers’ “take” even more.
A large chunk of what the brokers rake in is doled out as contributions to the campaign organizations of favored local and state politicians, who then look the other way in regards to the skimming from school district budgets.
The career bureaucrates in the district finance and superintendents offices who cook the books to make the skim possible then reap kickbacks in the form of insider deals on investments, real estate, cars, “seminars” to exotic locales, and similar “perks.”
As for the school boards, not even a majority of members needs to be in on the skim scam: All that’s needed is a couple of insider trustees to cajole and ridicule those trustees who try to really understand what the budget shell game. No one, not even the most highly principled trustee wants to look at public meetings like an incompetent fool who can’t grasp “simple” accounting.
Even the California Teachers Association is in on the skim scam: At the time that CTA was telling teachers they needed to take a salary cut because SUASD was nearing bankruptcy, CTA knew — as did anyone who looked at the district’s SACS Budget Report — that SAUSD would end that fiscal year with yet another surplus of tens of millions of dollars. But, CTA officials have their own political agenda, and they don’t want to upset the contributions apple cart that “their” politicians in Sacramento get from this statewide scam that school districts are engaged in.
Even this year, CTA was telling teachers at the start of the year that SAUSD was facing hard times and not to expect raises and full salary restoration. It was only when some classroom teachers went and got copies of the district’s SACS Budget Report showing the huge cash surplus for this year that CTA had to suddenly reverse itself. Local union leaders are teachers, not accountants; they rely on CTA to tell them a district’s financial status. That’s why local leaders went along with the salary cut a few years ago and why SAUSD’s local leaders were ready to accept another year of hardship for themselves and their colleagues.
District bureaucrats and their cronies get away with this because the State Department of Education fails to provide any meaningful oversight as to how your tax money is shuffled around. Remember a few years ago when angry voters tried to find out what the Anaheim Union High School District did with $142 million in bond money? When it became clear to them that the money had been misappropriated, they went to the State Attorney General, and the AG’s then-spokesman, Nathan Barankin said, so sorry, but “there is no direct supervisor over the administration of these bonds.” The United States Justice Foundation that monitors school districts (only “monitors”) said that citizens have little legal power to stop district bureaucrats from basically doing whatever they want. Strong, stringent oversight is much needed; but don’t expect politicians to create that because that would end their gravy train of campaign contributions coming from the skimmed money.
If you are brave enough to get your district’s SACS Budget Report and challenge the bureaucrats, they (including Orange County Department of Education Bureaucrats)will unload on you a barrage of financial gobbledygook laced with school accounting jargon designed to make you look and feel foolish. The best way to stand your ground is to know what the jargon really means. Here’s a vocabulary primer:
ADA: Average Daily Attendance. District begin the shell game by consistently understating their ADA because that makes it look like enrollment is declining. The formula for coming up with the ADA figure is deliberately complicated so that the average citizen or reporter ends up confused and believing whatever they are told by the “experts.”
Adopted Budget: Districts adopt a budget in June for the upcoming fiscal year that starts on July 1. This is a public relations budget in which income is greatly understated and expenditures greatly overstated to make headlines that the district is operating at a “deficit.” Skip the PR dysinformation, get your own copy of the SACS Budget Report and go right to the Bottom Line in the General Fund report; the Bottom Line is found in Section F, Fund Balance, Reservesm Line 2, Column F. If there’s a positive balance there, then there’s no deficit, no matter what’s written earlier in Section C. Also check Line 2b, Column F, in Section F: In no case, according to state law AB 1200 should the “Reserve” desgnated for economic incertainties exceed 3% of what’s listed in Section B, Expenditures, Line 9, Total Expentitures, Column F. For SAUSD, the AB 1200 specification is 2% of Total Expenditures.
Interim Budgets: After the PR budget to kick off the year, scare the public, and intimidate teachers from seeking salary increases, the district issues a series of “interim budgets.” Keep track of them. Typically, as the year goes on you’ll see the “deficit” shrink and the surplus grow.
COLA: Cost of Living Adjustment. Each year, the state automatically increases all districts’ budgets by a certain percentage to cover inflation. The COLA typically exceeds the actual inflation rate. This year (2006-07), SAUSD automatically got a COLA increase of 5.92%. That amounted to $14 million, which more than offset both inflation and the claimed enrollment decline. The same will be true for the coming year with a COLA coming in to SAUSD at $18 million for 2007-08 to cover inflation and any enrollment decline, according to the state budget office.
Required Reserve: This is an annual reserve specified by state law AB 1200. Based on a district’s ADA, the maximum reserve ranges from 3% down to 0.5%. SAUSD’s ADA dictates a reserve of 2% of Expenditures. Anything over that is pure padding, but padding that’s vehemently defended by the bureaucrats with more reasons that you can shake a stick at. Too bad there aren’t more informed citizens to shake sticks at the deceptions.
“Special Reserve”: Legally, there’s no such thing in school districts. The real name for “Special Reserver” is “Slush Fund.” It’s just another way of stashing cash that will later be skimmed into those county “investment accounts” that feed politicians and brokers.
Restricted Funds: Also called “Categorical Funds.” In fact, the bureaucrats like to use both terms in debates to keep citizens (and uninformed trustees) off-balance. These funds can only be spent for specific purposes, such as Special Education children.
Unrestricted Funds: These are funds that the district can spend for any educational purpose. One of the first moves in the shell game that the bureaucrats play on taxpayers is to move Unrestricted funds into Restricted accounts and claim the money now can’t be spent for meeting general needs; however, Unretricted funds are permanently Unrestricted, regardless of what accounts they are stashed in, and the Unrestricted funds can be moved out of the restricted accounts as soon as the public has been fooled. This part of the shell game goes on constantly.
Teacher: You’d think this would be obvious. But when the public hears the bureaucrats talking about “teachers,” the public thinks of people actually in the classroom teaching the community’s ch
ildren. But that’s not how the shell game is played. Districts count anyone who has a teaching credential as a “teacher,” including all the people in the district office, including the superindentent and all the assistant supers. That way the district can make its ratio of teachers to students look great.
Trustee: The reason a school board member is a trustee is because school districts are not any form of local government: School districts are legally part of the state government and board members can only act in trust for the state to fulfill state law and requirements. Trustees who fail to do this can be removed for Breach of Fiduciary Duty to the state. Most trustees frequently breach this duty; most aren’t even aware that “their” district is part of the state government. The Department of Education, in addition to failing to provide financial oversight, also fails to enforce trustees’ fiduciary obligations.
Zero-Based Budget: School districts are supposed to operate on zero-based budgets; that is, at the end of each fiscal year on June 30, there’s not supposed to be any money left over because on July 1 the state automatically refills the district’s accounts from the state budget. The money given to the district by the state to educate the community’s children is all supposed to have been spent to do just that. Any amount “left over” is legally a breach of the trustees’ Fiduciary Duty to provide children with the best possible education. But, who cares? After all, their only kids and they don’t vote and their parents are too busy to figure out what’s going on with the money.
TRANS: If the state budget is delayed, districts are provided with a financial mechanism for carrying on business until the state budget fills the district’s account. This mechanism is “Tax Revenue Anticipatory Notes.” TRANS for short. So, school districts are never really without money, even if the state budget is delayed.
Until average citizens inform themselves about their district’s budget, take on the bureaucrats, and force the politicians to end this campaing contribution gravy train that’s running at the expense of children, children will continue to be cheated, our nation’s future will continue to be endangered, and taxpayers themselves will continue to have their taxes skimmed away by the shell game scam.
SAEA’s Rep Council recognized and honored the heroic and courageous actions of the Washington and Remington School teachers who went public over SAUSD’s phantom classes. SAEA’s Board of Directors also nominated 8 Washington and 3 Remington School teachers for CTA’s WHO awards. The WHO awards will be held at the Turnip Rose in Costa Mesa on Wednesday, May 9, 2007.
Picture at the link: http://www.sateach.org/
It’s amazing to me that after seeing the MIND program presentation at the school board meeting that the board would consider any cuts in music programs. The statistics showed improved achievement across the board for the students in that music based program.
This program appears to be one of the few in the district that works consistently well.
By the way, Santa Ana has two libraries. One huge one in the downtown/midtown area, and one on the west end.
Art has been made aware of this, but again and again he misrepresents the library status.
Most of the SAUSD schools have libraries on their campuses as well.
#12
The MIND Institute program has been thriving at Madison for a little more than five years. Its successes are encouraging and that’s why I’m surprised this program has not been implemented at other school sites.
Dr. Stainer, assistant supt., elementary school division, should be held accountable for not providing the educational leadership expected of her. This program is helping our students. Why is Stainer blind and deaf to the success of MIND?
The energy Stainer expended on pressuring principals to coerce teachers into falsifying class rosters, should’ve been spent on improving the educational programs for the k-5 school children.
It’s time for Dr. Stainer to step aside. The district needs a more innovative ass’t supt of elementary education. An educator who is dedicated and passionate about the education of our k-5 school children.
We Must Learn Again
By Paul Cummins
We must learn them again: