Some Stuff About the District's Horrible, Terrible, No Good Very Bad Budget

The BoE was presented with two budget plans for a final vote last night:

Management's Plan: All Cuts to Sites and Direct Services, But We Promise to Look Sad About It for as Many as Ten Minutes

Sanchez/Alexander Plan: The "One Director for Every Student" Goal Is Better Suited to Windfall Years

Anyway, the latter got withdrawn, the former passed 6-1, and the district made some noise about perhaps someday hiring an Assistant Superintendent for Exploring How We Got So Many Directors in the First Place and then maybe a couple of Executive Directors to figure out some efficiencies and also check all the vending machines and couches for loose change.

None of this will surprise long-term budget watchers! However, a couple of points:

1. Everyone anticipates far better revenue projections once the state budget drops, and the district said that Peer Resources and AVID would be the first programs to be restored. Still, the district says all sorts of exciting things, but this commitment isn't in writing and the district sadly has a documented history of reneging on commitments. If you want these programs restored, be loud about it as soon as the Governor's budget drops. Remember: this budget also lays off two Directors and only hires one new Executive Director, and how will the district manage with so few new administrators? We know what the district prioritizes when left to its own devices. So let's not leave it unattended with new money.

2. The extent to which the district elides the severity of their actions fills me with a bleak sense of ennui, the kind of emotion wherein one must turn to the loudest and most aggressive music in one's collection just to feel something. Let me share that quiet void of feeling with you.

Various central staff made allusions to sites having so many choices to make with their site funding. It sounded like a clever site could restore all the central staff allocations they're losing (and for sites with multiple language pathways, especially those in Tier 2/3, they're losing a lot). However, this is not actually possible because the site funding is also getting chopped. So actually sites are getting cut every which way. Tier 3 sites will be cut marginally less, but they need exponentially more, so it's bad all around.

The state's austerity expert said several times last week and last night that "staff cuts don't mean service cuts". I am sure that this is a very nice turn of phrase, recommended by all consulting groups that rake in big bucks through blighting the land and firing the workers. It's also true 0% of the time. The example given was a school that lost 25% of its students but no staff; under this budget, it also loses staff but nothing changes except the class sizes are a little larger. This is not representative of any district school or the cuts in this budget. At many schools, the budget looks more like 12% enrollment declines being met with 30% budget cuts. You can't maintain service levels.

Saying stuff like this is dismissive to the point of arrogance. I'm sure it sounds great at the district office or in Sacramento, but anyone working at a school knows that everyone there has too many responsibilities already. When you cut staff, the work they did is not cut. That work gets added to someone else's load, or it's dropped entirely. Both options are terrible. Pretending otherwise is an abdication of responsibility on the part of the people paid to be responsible.