School Board Rejects Homework Policy, Avoids Layoffs at Coronado Schools

The best news came at the end of Thursday’s school board meeting. The Coronado Unified School District would not be issuing any pink slips this year. “No cuts, no layoffs. It’s a beautiful thing,” board member Dawn Ovrom said.

What she called “prudent fiscal policies” allowed the district to avoid cuts—unlike San Diego Unified School District, where trustees just voted to send layoff warnings to some 2,000 employees, including 885 teachers, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Still, is not exactly out of the fiscal fire. It faces a $2.3 million deficit and may well have to borrow money from its construction and maintenance fund to meet cash flow needs in 2012, even if Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget initiative fails.

He has requested that a measure be placed on the ballot to extend temporary taxes on automobiles, income and sales. Thus far, Republicans in the California Legislature have rebuffed his efforts to put the measure to a vote, arguing that voters rejected extensions in 2009 and 2010.

The heart of the problem is state funding. Under proposition 98, the state must give 40 percent of its general fund revenues from property taxes to K-12 schools, but in recent years, schools have only received 20 percent of the money owed them. Thirty percent of that is deferred. “You spend for 12 months, but you are not paid until five months later,” Superintendent Jeffrey Felix said. “The first deferred payment was in 2000 and the state has never caught up.”

“We’ve taken the brunt of this,” board member Doug Metz said. “They have not asked the prisons to take cuts; they have not asked special services to take cuts, only the schools.”

To make up for these sacrifices, Brown has proposed giving more money to schools by .

The problem for Coronado is that it receives money from Coronado’s redevelopment agency to fund building projects, a largess that has not been lost on school officials. More than 25 projects, including Village Elementary School, Coronado Middle School and a sports complex, were paid for with redevelopment money.

“It has allowed us to concentrate on students, rather than worrying about whether the roof was leaking,” Felix told a representative from the state controller’s office. He was in Coronado to . Coronado was one of 18 redevelopment agencies the state chose to examine for irregularities. None were found. 

The fate of the redevelopment agencies is far from clear. Legislation has been introduced, and even if it passes in its present form, litigation is expected.

The is contemplating a number of , including issuing more bonds for the redevelopment agency. 

If the city elects to issue bonds ahead of the agency’s possible demise, it will need the school board’s approval, as Board President Bruce Shepherd pointed out. The district has a memorandum of agreement with the agency that gives it a voice.

Signaling its support for the good judgment of teachers, the board rejected the superintendent’s . The vote was unanimous. “We don’t want to handcuff our teachers,” board member Ledyard Hakes said.

The board instead directed Felix to ask each school to craft its own homework policy and post it online for the next school year, so that parents would know what is expected. He agreed to the directive. “I know what needs to be done and will have it to you by August,” he said.

While the board demurred from a homework policy, it did feel compelled to proffer a homework philosophy that reflected its values. It charged members Ovrom and Brenda Kracht to meet with Felix to draft one.