Sweetwater Union High School District
Editordude: Here’s the latest post from Thomas Ultican about the latest shenanigans from local charter school supporters in their quest to undermine public education, how the students recruited from public schools into charter ones have drained public school districts’ funds, and how the Sweetwater Union High School District is under attack. In delving into the details, Ultican takes on the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Voice of San Diego for their unabashedly support for charter schools over public schools.
By Thomas Ultican / Tultican
The newly hired Chief Financial Officer of Sweetwater Union High School District (SUHSD), Jenny Salkeld, discovered a significant problem with the budget she inherited. She presented her findings to the Sweetwater leadership team in early September which forwarded her report onto the County Office of Education (COE). The SUHSD board also called in all bargaining units to suspend contract negotiations and inform them of the budgetary uncertainties. Sensationalism and subterfuge became the new reality in Chula Vista, California.
An October San Diego Union-Tribune article reported,
“On June 25, the school board approved a budget for this school year that assumed the district had spent $328 million in unrestricted funding last school year and had $17 million in reserves going into this school year. In September, Salkeld presented a report showing that the district actually had spent $20 million more than that and started this school year with a negative reserve balance of $4 million.
“On top of spending more than previously estimated, the district received $6 million less in one-time state funding than it had expected.”
After receiving Sweetwater’s alert about the accounting errors, the COE officially disapproved the 2018-19 budget the district had submitted. The reasons for disapproving the budget were the reasons Salkeld had reported.
Here are some other key points Ultican makes:
Apparently someone at the county leaked the budget information to the Voice of San Diego. The district which was in the process of understanding the extent of the problem did not have that opportunity. Instead they were faced with a withering public attack in both the San Diego Union-Tribune and The Voice of San Diego. The headlines implied that a group of incompetent people at SUHSD were incapable of managing their affairs and were involved in possible fraud.
In the more than twenty reports in these two publications from September through December, it was obscured that it was the Sweetwater District which found the problem and informed the county. It was also never pointed out that budget analysts at the COE failed in their oversight responsibilities.
In November, the county approved Sweetwater’s revised budget.
Budget Shortfalls Throughout the State
Kristen Taketa reporting for the San Diego Union-Tribune noted,
“At least 10 districts in the county are projecting that they will not be able to meet their financial commitments next school year, including Chula Vista Elementary, Jamul-Dulzura Union, Mountain Empire Unified, Oceanside Unified, San Diego Unified, San Marcos Unified, San Ysidro, Sweetwater and Vista Unified. More districts won’t be able to meet their financial commitments after next year.”
Teketa provided three reasons for what is a statewide public school funding problem:
Rising pension costs: To address looming pension debt, the state in 2014 started increasing school districts’ share of pension costs. In 2013-14, school districts paid 8 percent of their teachers’ salaries to the state’s teacher pension fund. This year, they had to pay 16 percent.
Rising special education costs :
Declining enrollment: Oceanside officials estimate that they can only compensate for 40 percent of revenue lost when they lose students. The student enrollment losses are attributed mostly to charter schools. California, unlike some states, does not financially mitigate the burden caused by charter schools on public school districts. The only option districts have is to reduce services to the remaining students.
Last May, In the Public Interest published a paper by University of Oregon’s Professor Gordon Lafer called “Breaking Point: The Cost of Charter Schools for Public School Districts.” He looked specifically at the impact of charter schools on San Diego Unified School District. Lafer found that the annual impact of student losses was $65,902,809 and that the cost per charter school student was $4,913.
By taking the 5500 students in charter schools instead of Sweetwater schools and multiplying that number by a conservative estimate of $4,000 in cost per student the total is $22,000,000 in stranded costs for the district; more than the budget error Salkeld discovered.
Charter Student Growth Compared with District Enrollment
What Caused the Budget Error?
Gene Chavira, President of the Sweetwater Education Association (affiliate of the California Teachers Association) said he believes this budget problem has roots that stretch back to the early 2000’s when Ed Brand was serving his first term as Superintendent. Chavira referenced some strange land sales from that period. Later, during Brand’s second stint as Superintendent, he and SUHSD CFO Diana Russo established two charter schools; another move Gene found suspicious.
The two charter schools were elementary schools belonging to SUHSD. The neighboring elementary school districts were unhappy and reacted by expanding their own charter schools to include the grades 7 – 12 that were serviced by Sweetwater. …
The San Diego Union and the Voice of San Diego are Biased Against Public Education
Editorials in the San Diego Union-Tribune continually attack teachers and their unions. An editorial leading up to the 2018 general election called for a former banker and charter school chief as Secretary of Public Instruction (SPI). Following a familiar destroy public education (DPE) script; another editorial created a false crisis as the predicate for an urgent plea to elect charter school executive, Marshall Tuck, over California State Assemblyman, Tony Thurmond.
In 2005, Buzz Woolley founded Voice of San Diego. It was the first digital nonprofit news organization to serve a local community in the country. Besides his interest in using new technologies for media, Woolley also is enthusiastic about education technology in the classroom. In 2013 Woolley’s Girard Foundation sent over $500,000 to companies developing software for “personalized” education and competency-based education.
The year before starting the Voice of San San Diego, Woolley and Gap Founder Don Fisher established the Charter School Growth Fund. John Walton (Walmart heir) and Greg Penner (Walmart heir) joined the board. In 2016, that fund had assets of $217,176,094 with a yearly income of $95,184,785.
A local media watch dog report tells the story of an education reporter losing her job while perusing a store about the COE. Blogger Maura Larkins wrote,
“Voice of San Diego dropped its coverage of SDCOE attorney shenanigans, and laid-off its stellar education reporter Emily Alpert.”
“Voice of San Diego benefactors Buzz Woolley and Irwin Jacobs [founded Qualcomm], who claim to care about education, could have easily paid Emily’s salary with their pocket change if they’d wanted her to stay.”
“It seems Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Emily Alpert weren’t on the same page.”
Some Concluding Words
… Two mainstream media outlets in San Diego that have regularly promoted privatizing public education and “corporate education reform” have been ruthlessly attacking SUHSD. They have indicated that the leaders in Chula Vista are incompetent and corrupt. The obvious dog-whistle here is that there are too many non-whites in SUHSD leadership.
The truth is that the SUHSD team is highly competent and has delivered a refreshing era of ethics and openness to the South-bay. Karen Janney is an educator with deep knowledge and experience, plus she is a gifted leader and public speaker. The present financial team led by Jenny Salkald is much more impressive than the county or state teams who have been nothing short of unprofessional.
The real investigation should be into whom or what is motivating this unjust attack on SUHSD? Also, why are we paying all those bloated salaries at the San Diego County Office of Education and for what?
Editordude: I urge you to go to Ultican’s blog and read the fuller original.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
A couple of decades ago I was in the classroom for San Diego City Schools. The charter school advocates & their long claws were clawing their way into the classroom even then. They tried to reach into my drawers & yank out my undies on their way to my wallet. The charter school folks are like big banks: where ever there is a revenue stream, they want a cut. They are middlemen w/ a penchant for mediocrity.
By my very own sophisticated calculations, I figure I saved thousands of young minds just by leaving the profession.
I’ve never looked back.
Privitization of public schools ought have no place in our republic.
Here, here, as the Brits say.
While I agree wholeheartedly with Rick Callejon and Frank Gormlie, public schools in the South Bay have been a s**t show for decades. I don’t fault the teachers, but rather the administrators and school board members.
Yep, yer right, Paul. Just look at the gyrations the San Ysidro school district has gone through from at least the late 80’s. What a mess that place has been. Back then, if I remember correctly, a grand jury had recommended that the school district be dis-
banded & absorbed into another district because it had been so mismanaged.
What should a parent do? Move?
That still doesn’t explain why there were so many questionable accounting entries. If this article is true, the books should still add up. The chief financial officer who retired should’ve presented a budget shortfall, not a surplus. The errors are deliberate fraud, the SEC will prove it.