The 2008-09 school year is coming to an end. The last day of school is June 18. The graduating seniors are overjoyed with college acceptance letters. The letters are coming from University of California systems, and Universities from all over the Country.
During the summer, all students will be enjoying their time off, some of them will work part time making some money. The summer school will be dismal for lack of funding.
I attended the May 11 monthly Capo Unified School District meeting and was happy to see the Trustees scrutinizing consent calender items. This is where things are buried at times. The award of contracts versus laying off classified employees were looked into very carefully. No one wants the District employees pink slipped and those work are contracted out!
Superintendent(s)
As I predicted in my earlier columns, the fired superintendent Woodrow Carter has sued CSUD for about half a million dollars for breach of contract. The damage is for half of the unexpired contract pay per state law, attorney fees, and interest on the unpaid salary.
This suit is going to take money away from the children’s education.
Prosecution of another former CUSD superintendent, James Fleming, is turning into a saga. The trial of Fleming and assistant Superintendent Susan McGill has been postponed for the sixth time to August 17.
John Barnett, Fleming’s new attorney of one month, told the judge that he needs time and he will file a pretrial motion. This case was originally scheduled to go to trial two years ago.
Fleming and McGill are being prosecuted by the Orange County District Attorney’s office. They will face a jury over charges that they created an "enemies list" and misused District funds.
Financial
We are seeing an interesting situation: "Uncle Sam giveth and brother Arnold taketh away." The District is getting $25.8 million in federal stimulus funds over two years, about $13 million in general funds and another $12.4 million in restricted funds for Title 1 and Special Education.
The State is cutting $25.5 million for the 2009-10 school year and, since the ballot propositions on the May 19 ballot were defeated, possibly a further $5.5 million cut.
As is often the case, the State is short changing our children’s education. This is not a fun time to be at the helm of a School District.
It was interesting to see that one CUSD Board member had an agenda item to hire an outside Public Relation firm. At present the CUSD Chief Communication Officer is doing a superb job so why spend money on an outside firm? I am glad to see that the agenda did not go through.
A San Juan Capistrano resident had an agenda item concerning the District constituents voting at large.
At it’s inception in early 1960s, CUSD adopted the District wide voting. Now the district is large with over 200,000 voters covering over 200,000 miles. Hence, voting by Precincts make sense. Citizens spoke in favor of abolishing the at large voting.
From the discussion at the Board table, it seems the majority of the Trustees prefer to abolish the at large voting. This will be good for the future CUSD elections. The Board asked the staff to look into the item and report back.