The November 10 CUSD Board meeting attendees were entertained by 5th grade Choir groups of Chaparral, Bathgate, and George White Elementary School String Quartet. The musicals were great, one can see future musicians from the South County.
The Ladera Ranch 5th graders left for a four-day science camp on November 17. I am sure the campers are all excited. I wish all of them grand experience under star filled cool nights in the mountains.
School Board News
The November 10 Board meeting had over 20 speakers, thus each speaker got one minute to speak. There were essentially two groups of speakers: parents and teachers.
The majority of the parents admonished the seven board members for being untrue with their election promises.
The Board majority is spending money retaining attorneys, demographers, and so on, to fight the possibility of changing at-large voting to electing each of the seven Trustees by district
The Board approved retaining an attorney at a cost of $25,000 to change the voting by district from June 2010 to November 2010. The Trustees are wasting precious money at the expense of our students’ education.
This is another example of officials misusing their elective power to whatever they want against the will of the voters, and the students they were elected to serve. It was this behavior that the "reform candidates" ran to stop. But once in the majority, the so-called “reformers” have simply given us more of the same.
Even the student representative to the Board spoke against spending money to retain the lawyer when students are penalized by large class size, the elimination of programs as music and sports, and so on.
The teachers complained about the salary reduction request by the Board. The CUSD teachers are at the bottom of the pay scale compared to other Orange County School District.
I hope CUSD teachers do not leave for better pay to other surrounding Districts. We have already seen the Administrators leaving if that is any indication of CUSD’s capability of retaining good employees.
The 2009-10 school budget has a short fall of $25 million. The majority of the budget – 88% to be exact, or $333 million – goes towards salary and benefits and the rest – about $46 million – goes for books, supplies, and other services such as utilities, and so on.
I am glad to see the District is trying to cut the utility expenses (about $9 million). With my current involvement in the Energy Management activities and reading under the Agenda item that the utilities are giving 40% rebates for energy efficiency project, I wonder whether the staff is equipped to oversee these projects.
The utility rebate of either 3 or 5 cents per kilowatt hour doesn’t explain how and where the staff is getting the 40% rebates, and no one at the Board level asked any questions of the staff on this item!!
The legal defense team of former Superintendent James Fleming and Assistant Superintendent Susan McGill is claiming that the evidence linking the former administrators to the enemies list is tainted. Hence the defense is requesting for a dismissal of the District Attorney’s case against the defendants.