Why isn't there more urgency to resolving this budget shortfall? If people knew about this back in July, why does it take until mid-September to take action?

It feels like the Board members (and District staff) are avoiding tough decisions, and kicking the can down the road, because of the 3 open seats up for election in November.

I would like to hear from the non-incumbent candidates their ideas for tackling the budget gap.

If the budget issue is not resolved by the time I get my ballot in October, I will NOT be voting for either incumbent (Emberling or Baten-Caswell). In my opinion, a basic qualification to be a board member is to be able to budget without deficits, and without any financial tricks (like using bond money, or dipping into reserve funds).

Please tell all your neighbors to do the same, and like this post, so that we can send a message to the board.

Daubers blog: Web Link

Collins blog (says it is his board comments): Web Link

Seem to be saying the same thing - management should cough up a list of options and how fast they can be done, and start cutting right now, for impact this year.

It is ridiculous - Caswell, Emberling, etc. all pounded the table for large, multi-year raises, and now are pounding the table for "super conservative" forecasts. They seem to have no independent judgment - just sticking their fingers in the wind, reacting to the latest "crisis."

Whether or not this budget issue is resolved by October, I will NOT be voting for either incumbent. They got us into this mess and are dragging their feet getting us out. They refuse to make non-popular decisions with the staff and refuse to listen to parent’s (and teacher’s) pleas for smaller class sizes. Time for new blood and new ideas.

These articles about the budget seem to never change. Has it really been 2 months and there is no list of budget cuts?

The overpaid administrators at the top already got like a 20% raise in recent years. If pulling back on ridiculous increases is going to hurt morale, they should just leave, further saving us money, and helping the morale of families whose children have suffered fom the backbiting, personal retaliatory politics, and ineptitude. Any useless CYA positions should be first, like the PR person.

We should further stop comparing ourselves to other districts, although we are pretty expensive on that score, and get a grip. The budget of the school district rivals the City's with far less complex of a mandate.

I agree, I will not be voting for either incumbent. I only wish I could take back all my past votes and support, I made them based on personal relationships and credentials. Now I know that was not enough. I hope the people who are not associated with the district because your kids are out will do more than a superficial look at the candidates.

Collins's blog post linked from above is well worth reading. Clear and sensible. I hope we can have an election that is focused on issues and not just mudslinging. God knows there is enough to talk about.

The big development yesterday was Caswell taking a big step towards Dauber's position that cuts need to be made this year rather than next year. Opposing the use of bond funds for the tech refresh means that she is asking for $1.2 million in cuts to replace them. That change is probably because of the election. It's pretty obvious what the politically smart position is on this.

Three things to watch for in the next few weeks:
Will Caswell soften on the admin raises? If Caswell isn't going to look like a paper tiger, she is going to have to bite the bullet on some actual cuts, not just call for them in general.
Will Emberling join Dauber and Caswell? She's up for re-election, but unlike Caswell she seems to lack a basic understanding of the politics of this situation.
Will other non-incumbent candidates join Collins in criticizing the teacher raise in May and calling for cuts to get the budget back in balance? Srinivasan was the only other candidate who spoke at the board meeting. He talked about the goals and didn't make a whole lot of sense. DiBrienza didn't speak, don't know if she was in the audience or not. Not talking about the elephant in the room isn't going to inspire much interest or confidence in voters.

@BW,
Caswell's already won re-election. You're kidding yourself if you're expecting any other outcome.

@reality check

I tend to agree, but on the other hand, Caswell voted for the teacher raise over Dauber's objections, and it turned out to be a budget-buster. That gives challengers an opening. On top of that, the Weekly already signaled in the spring that Caswell won't be getting an endorsement. All that makes this less of a walk than you might think. At least Caswell seems to think so, on the evidence of this switch. Moving closer to Dauber on this gives her some insurance.

The Weekly is out to get her. They didn't endorse Townsend in 2012, and Townsend got only 1000 more votes than Emberling, a not-so-strong rookie candidate. And that was without a budget blow-up.

That said, Emberling seems more vulnerable. I doubt the Weekly will endorse - she is too clueless, plus she voted for the OCR resolution. And she is looking like a deer in the headlights on the budget snafu - she literally does not know what to do or say. She only got in by beating Dauber the first time he ran, when he had no endorsements and half the town hating him and there were 4 candidates for 3 spots, and even then she won by 900 votes.

Is McGee a moron?

Is he incompetent?

I don't think so. So why does the board treat him as such?

Why does the board ask for a list of things to cut, and micromanage him? At work, I only do this to low performing idiots on their way out the door.

Don't ask for a list of cuts; TELL him the budget. Done.

Here's a lesson in boardology:

"Max - here is your budget: xx million dollars. Don't use reserves, don't play hide-the-pickle with finances. You figure it out. You screwed it up, you fix it. You have two years."

Don't bother bringing a list of cuts - that allows Max to move decision accountability to the board. Make Max figure out the cuts to perform. Make him do his job.

I don't think he is incompetent, why would the board do his job for him?

" They didn't endorse Townsend in 2012, and Townsend got only 1000 more votes than Emberling, a not-so-strong rookie candidate. And that was without a budget blow-up."


Yeah, Townsend had a whisper campaign against her in the last election. However, even with that, she beat both Emberling and wiped the floor with Dauber (you neglected to mention any of that).
Townsend also won the previous election with the Weekly not endorsing her. Seems the Weekly's endorsement matters very little in election results. So Caswell's a shoe-in.

@history lesson - You might want to check in with Catherine Crystal Foster on the importance of the Weekly endorsement. Her failure to give a straight answer to the OCR resolution question cost her the endorsement, which cost her the election.

I agree, with incumbents the endorsement matters less, since their names are already known to the community (and they were likely endorsed in the past).

Townsend didn't receive the Weekly endorsement in 2007 or 2012, and in each case polled below other incumbents. In 2007, she polled 5000 votes behind newcomer Barbara Klausner, and 1300 votes behind Caswell, squeaking by challenger Wynn Hauser by <200 votes (who said he had to stop campaigning due to illness, I believe, but who knows).

Why are you so focused on Dauber? A two-term incumbent beats a controversial newcomer - film at 11? Two years later, he was the top vote-getter. He's on the board; you can let it go now.

The phrasing, "On the backs of the teachers" seems a little extreme given the fact that we just gave them a massive, retroactive, raise. I'm generally glad that we did (but I would have chosen to give them the smaller one proposed by Dauber). But when you've just been handed an outsized and that the district can't afford and clearly shouldn't have been given, saying that fixing that mistake is penalizing you is a little over the top.

Of course, long before we do that, we should undo the "me-too" raises. Absurd.

Melissa has obviously figured out that she doesn't have to be the top vote getter to be reelected. She just has to outrun Heidi. Allying with Dauber against Heidi puts her in the right side of the budget issue, and makes it a little more likely that the Weekly will swallow hard and endorse her.

"You might want to check in with Catherine Crystal Foster on the importance of the Weekly endorsement. "

So you're saying the Weekly endorsement is worth a dozen votes? Hardly worth the effort!


"A two-term incumbent beats a controversial newcomer "

Emberling was a newcomer not a two term incumbent. And polled significantly ahead of a Weekly endorsement.

@Heidi - I think you missed the other poster's earlier comment about Townsend defeating Dauber in 2012.

I imagine Heidi won't be getting the Weekly endorsement this time, due to her lack of meaningful contribution. That should give us another data point on what that endorsement is worth.

Townsend is a lame duck and now irrelevant. When she defended the teacher raise on Thursday, none of her fellow board members chimed in to agree, even after Dauber made the point again that the raise is the reason for the budget mess.

Watch in the next few weeks for Max to come up with some real cuts for this year, as he realizes that he's losing his board's support for no cuts this year. He already came up with $100k in cancelled HR hiring.

I heard that Max and Dauber attended a PTA presidents meeting today, and Dauber contradicted Max's sunny view of the situation. If PTA presidents start to doubt the staff's management, Max is going to need to quickly make Caswell and Dauber happier with the plan.

Lots of doubt at the PTA level already. One of the high school PTA presidents allegedly sent a scathing email to McGee and the Board expressing no confidence in the way the budget is being handled. If PTA presidents aren't being boosters, nobody is.

Agree, Max is getting hammered by Dauber and Collins, with Caswell now jumping on too. Max hates the board telling him what to do, and probably hates making cuts, so will resist and stonewall as long as he can. The winner is Elena at the Weekly - the stories just write themselves!

The other winner is Todd Collins, who gets to highlight his financial background and his opposition to the size of the teacher raise and to the staff desire to spend reserves and bond funds rather than cut spending.

@Voter

If it is the PTA/PTSA president from Paly, I would be leery of throwing in my support. Witnessing the way this individual interacts with staff is telling, and is not be representative of the parent community in my experience.

Having said that, it is critical that we understand how budget projections are interpreted and presented to the lay community. Students, their teachers, and families deserve better.

Respectfully,

gb

@BadManagement

The fundamental flaw in your premise: We are not talking about a private corporation where all that matters is the bottom line. School board members are public trustees whose overarching obligation is to ensure the best education possible for the district's students. That means wrestling with hard trade-offs, not ducking then. Board trustees cannot simply defer to McGee's choices, especially given his evident desire to put the financial interests of his well-compensated management staff -- whose incompetence got us into this mess in this first place -- ahead of other pressing educational needs.

For way too long, the PAUSD board has miserably failed to fulfill its trustee duty to oversee staff, rubber-stamping one bad superintendent recommendation after the next. If board members don't like the heat, they should get out of the kitchen.

So no, not "done."

If what you say is true, then McGee is not doing his job.

In such a case, the board should hire a replacement rather than do his job.

Public sector has no inherent right to be poorly managed. I see no reason to do his job for him OR let him off the hook to make the hard decision. No board should be a rubber stamp.
Certainly when our children and our money are at stake.

At best you could say Max has to go if he cannot fix this.

The idea that this board is going to figure out how to manage McGee is laughable. To paraphrase Trump, he could stand in the middle of El Camino and shoot someone and they would still do his bidding in the next board meeting.

I have lived here since 1981 and for most of those years there were few concerning headlines about the PAUSD School Board. In recent years it seems one crisis is followed by another. One has to look at management when this happens. We are quick to point out that people seek to move here because of the schools. Reads to me like we'd best get our act back together if we want that to be a reality and not a myth.

Save the 2,008 applauds parent Rita Tetzlaff for her stellar work toward reducing class sizes.

Thank you, Rita, not only for your excellent "Weekly" editorial, but for speaking to the board.

I share the concern that, with our budgeting being done as it is, "commitments like hiring teachers to reduce large classes will fall by the wayside."

Readers can find out more about the Save the 2,008 commitment to shrinking our largest high-school classes to a friendlier size, more conducive to learning, at: savethe2008.com.

I hope you'll join us!

I find that when it comes to the education sector, they are almost always talking about budget cuts and how difficult it is to fund schools for this and that. Surely there are better investment and money storage solutions that are available to help the school ensure that they have the funds when they need it? As it is, like they said - there're enough hard decisions and tough calls to make so why shouldn't they try to do something else to improve the situation.