This will be broadcast on cable access channels starting October 12, 2008, but we have it now. Once again, we are proud to bring information to the Mt. Diablo Unified School District that is not available anywhere else. We would appreciate your comments after watching. I imagine the discussion will be robust.
I would like to thank the staff at CCTV for making the video available to us.
I would like to thank the staff at CCTV for making the video available to us.
27 comments:
Good to see that April cannot answer questions directly... still.
It sounds like Jeff Adams agrees with Gary Eberhart on every major issue. I'm beginning to think he's in the race to oust April Treece. If so, his time will be more effectively spent campaigning for Gary Eberhart and Sherry Whitmarsh.
April is Full of it -at 10:20. She talks about all these great changes.. well in fact she stumbles over her words. She didn't mention Foothill still is missing 2 math teachers! Yah, they're real proactive!
Somewhere around 20 minutes Gary starts his closing remarks. Good job Gary ! I felt like cheering in my living room! Ok, maybe I did a little :)
I remember talking with Paul Strange back in June or July about the State budget and negotiating teacher contracts given the uncertainty of the final numbers. Mr. Strange mentioned that the District could still negotiate the contracts and the compensation, benefits, etc. would be contingent on the final State numbers. I believe Gary Eberhart may have also favored that strategy.
Jeff Adams' recommendation (negotiating a worst case and a best case scenario, etc.) sounds a lot like the plan Mr. Strange discussed with me. And, since Mr. Strange and Mr. Eberhart spoke with Mr. Adams after Mr. Adams pulled the paperwork, I am wondering if Mr. Strange and/or Mr. Eberhart shared their ideas with Mr. Adams and Mr. Adams is now trying to take credit for someone else's idea.
What are your opinions Mr. Strange and Mr. Eberhart? (I know Mr. Adams won't answer or I'd ask him as well.)
Mr. Adams has changed his opinions over and over again about different issues. Currently he is stating things that Gary and Sherry have been saying, he wasn't saying these these before. He's clearly saying anything he can to win the voters including in my opinion lying. You can't say one thing at one debate and another at the next one.
I am also very impressed with Sherry Whitmarsh. She shared specific strategies and she shared her qualifications (budget development and management and experience facilitating discussions or negotiations between individuals with very different views). She delivered an impressive closing statement as well - direct and to the point.
I was impressed with Jeff Adams, I think he has far more credentials than any of them. I like Eberhart too, but I'm a little concerned that he has too much "history" with the bad blood on the current board. I'd be concerned that if he wins there will be some on the board that won't work with him just to be snotty. I think a clean sweep is in order, Adams and Whitmarsh
Adams credentials work against him. His experience is with a law firm that represents management's interests, not the interests of individual employees or employee units.
I think that is why none of the Unions endorsed him. I don't think he can bring anything to the bargaining table that Paul Strange and Gary Eberhart haven't already proposed.
Mr. Adams entered the race at the eleventh hour and it seems he is still trying to come up with his platform. He's flip flopping and he's starting to sound a lot like Gary Eberhart, Paul Strange and Sherry Whitmarsh on the key issues.
Why is he running? Even that answer has changed over the past month or so.
The board without Eberhart would not be good. We need his experience. He's the one that caught the line item on the IRS funds, he's the one that ask the tough questions. We need him for his leadership abilities and his experience. Jeff Adams doesn't have any credentials or experience with this. He's misleading he public. One minute he says one thing, another minute he says something else. He also clearly does not understand the law when it comes to how money can be used and not used in a school district. It's also a complete insult to all of the teachers in the district for him to claim he's been an active parent. He hasn't the teachers at his children's school have made that clear. I want someone on the board who has experience and is honest and doesn't change their opinions on things just to get themselves elected. There has been no other politician in this county as honest and forthcoming as Gary, he belongs on the board.
April's talk about the budget cuts was ridiculous! The thoughtful list is a list that the Superintendent brings forward. Not a list that is thoughtfully looked at like Gary and Sherry advocate for that rates programs and decides what is effective and what isn't. She again just wants to rubber stamp what the Superintendent wants. Jeff Adams plans on giving us the COLA for our benefits. Mr. Adams there isn't going to be a COLA for several years. Of course I'm sure you'll pull Eberhart and Whitmarshs' ideas out of your pocket and pass them off as your own.
Treece wants us to check into the misinformation that is surrounding this campaign. Can she be a little bit more specific? I haven't found any misinformation?
The more I see Adams the more I think he's just a spoiler in this case. An intentional one brought in by Treece, or McHenry, or Allen. He has no original ideas...he's just repeating the things that Eberhart has been saying for years now. The likely result of his candidacy will be to ruin this district by getting Treece re-elected and then sending many of our teachers to other districts.
I also thought Ms. Treece's comments about how she balanced the budget were misleading. All Board members vote to balance the budget - they can't propose to spend more than they have or the County will throw the budget back at them and ask them to try again.
Gary Eberhart and Sherry Whitmarsh are asking the Superintendent to evaluate all programs and services. April Treece is content with the status quo.
But, let's just think for a moment how easy it is to balance a budget if you wait a year or two to negotiate contracts with your employees. If you wait a year or two, you've allowed all the hidden problems to rise to the surface (i.e. IRS penalties).
By the 2008-09 school year, you know whether you really did have surplus funds at the end of 2006-07. If you have surplus funds, then you can decide whether those teachers and other employees should have had a raise two years ago. If you don't have a surplus, then you have no funds available to grant that retroactive salary increase. Your decision is a given.
In an entity that spends probably 80 to 85% or so of its money on salaries and benefits, who couldn't balance the budget if they always had the benefit of hindsight?
I've often wondered if this is Mr. McHenry's strategy. Stall the negotiations for a year or two so you'll know exactly how much money you have left over to spend on employees - our most valuable resource. I wonder how our employees feel about being fed the leftovers - the scraps that fall off the table.
I've got news for Ms. Treece. Balancing the budget under these circumstances is not something to be proud of. I think every candidate for School Board knows this except for April Treece.
While listening to April all I could think of was the old Dilbert saw "Don't Step in the Leadership!"
I was wondering if anyone on this blog has tried to contact April personally either at her email or by phone.
Remember - we should be grading the students and not the superintendent!! How about we grade the performance of the board majority by voting April out. And remember...it is "in November"
April Palin did a good job avoiding answering any of the questions.
When will we hear more about our students and less about the superintendent and some of the board member's personal agendas.
April just lied completely! I live in MDUSD district, but work in the WCSD. It was NOT Walnut Creek School District parents who signed the petition to move schools into our district. It was MDUSD parents who lived in Walnut Creek who wanted this change. Many of us in WCSD worried about such a change because the small district could not handle the additional administrative costs AND it would drastically change our district dynamics. I can't believe she would make such an obvious lie!
6:02 This is election time. The only way students are going to benefit is if the board majority changes. The two candidates that have a plan to make that happen are Eberhart and Whitmarsh. One must talk about what each candidate's personal agenda is so we can make informed decsions on whom to vote. To me it's a no brainer, Eberhart and Whitmarsh and then we can start talking about how to turn this district around for the students and employees.
Anonymous 3:31 pm,
I have contacted all our Board members by email from time to time. When I intend to speak during public comment or on a specific agenda item at an upcoming board meeting, I often send the Board the information ahead of time. I do this so the Board has a chance to think about the issues and can prepare to discuss the issues during Board Comment or during Board discussion of the agenda items.
You've probably already listened to April's answers from this most recent debate. April's responses often strike me as vague, whether she's answering debate questions, commenting on agenda items at Board meetings or answering emails. She also tends to shift the focus from what the Board and the Superintendent can control to things outside their control (like the State budget). Superintendent McHenry favors this technique as well.
I will give you an example. On March 4, 2008, I proposed several areas I believed could be cut or areas the Board should consider for possible cuts. I specifically recommended taking a look at cellphone expenditures (costing us approximately $150,000 a year) as well as the costs of training our administrators. (I subsequently obtained the NEXTEL invoices for two different months and discovered that roughly 25% of the phones had zero usage during those months even though we were being billed for them.)
Here are some excerpts from April's email response:
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the budget cutting process Mt. Diablo Unified School District is undertaking in the next few weeks. I appreciate your taking the time to share your ideas.
As you know, the Board will have to make some very difficult decisions. I believe it is unreasonable for the state of California to impose on Contra Costa school districts more than $65 million in budget reductions by March 15th. But, that is what is happening all over our county--and indeed school districts throughout the region and state.
*****************************
In June, I again emailed Board members about my reaction to the Board majority's June 17 and June 24 decisions to postpone consideration of any further budget cuts until after the State budget numbers come out.
Here are some excerpts from my email:
Members of the Board,
Many parents, teachers and other community members are extremely disappointed with the decision by three members of the Board to wait until the State budget numbers come out before considering or acting upon additional budget cuts. The only way members of the Board can even hope to justify this position is if they believe one of the following:
1. The District already has ample means to satisfactorily complete the contract negotiations with our employee units (regardless of the final budget outcome) or
2. The final State budget will provide substantial additional funds to our District so that additional cuts will not be necessary.
I don't believe members of the Board who voted against considering additional cuts at this time believe either of these to be the case. Therefore, I am perplexed by a position of "watchful waiting" at a time when the last thing we can afford to do is sit back and wait. I am not convinced by arguments that it is prudent to wait and see what the final State budget will be. These arguments are excuses to do nothing at a time when we must act.
I am not saying we need to prepare for the worst. I am saying we need to plan ahead with the information we already have. The Board cannot enter mediation in the fall, without having made some meaningful and visible attempt to reprioritize the budgt and free up additional funds to settle contracts...
Here is April's response:
Thank you for all of your thoughtful recommendations sent to Board members in the past week or so. I appreciate receiving the input you provide and will take into consideration this information in the weeks and months ahead.
****************************
So here we are, three months later, with nothing available to negotiate with. The State budget still looks bad - as anticipated. And, we've had a few bad surprises of our own making (busing expenses underestimated by almost $600,000 or 65% of the original budget, and $833,550 in possible IRS payments, interest and penalties).
We need to do what Gary Eberhart, Paul Strange and Sherry Whitmarsh propose we do. We need strategic planning and we need to identify which programs are working and which are not. The wait and see and then respond with a knee-jerk reaction approach favored by Mr. McHenry and three of our Board members doesn't work.
I encourage everyone to attend Board meetings and email or phone our trustees. We need to tackle the big issues - like how we direct our funds to competitive compensation for our current employees instead of (for example)postretirement benefits for employees who elected early retirement, at a current cost of about $4 million a year.
These issues can only be resolved through collaboration between management and our employee units (with direction from our elected Board members).
Anonymous 3:31 pm,
I hope you're still with us after reading my rather lengthy previous post. In fairness to April, I thought I should include a more recent email where she was direct and to the point.
On September 3, at 11:38 am, I emailed April and asked:
Ms. Treece,
Did you contact Jeff Adams prior to July 14, 2008 to encourage him to run for school board?
Thank you for your response.
On September 3, at 11:43 am, April responded:
Ms. Englund,
No, I did not.
On September 3, at 12:21 pm, April followed up with another email:
Ms. Englund,
Is there a reason you haven't asked Jeff Adams himself? I think it would be best to direct any questions about his interest in running for school board directly to him.
On September 3 at 2:20 pm, I responded:
Ms. Treece,
Thank you for your prompt response to my email. I do intend to ask Mr. Adams the question when he makes himself available to the public. I did not want to contact him at work because I know many companies prohibit political and other activities of a personal nature on company time (utilizing company phones, computers, mailroom staff, etc. for personal or political pursuits).
I also noticed that neither you nor Mr. Adams has accepted the invitation to participate in Andre Gensburger's Candidates' blog. Are you planning to join? It seems like a very neutral forum and an effective way to respond to the public.
Also, will you participate in the "live" Candidates' forum on Thursday, October 9, 2008 in Pleasant Hill?
Thank you again.
******************************
April never did respond to my last email and since then, Mr. Adams and Dick Allen have chosen to ignore my questions about Mr. Adams' candidacy as well.
Speaking of responding to emails and concerns. I sent a letter via email about the flawed student assessment policy passed by the board in late June. (Of course, there was no teacher input before passing the new district policy.) I suggested the Board amend the policy from returning every quiz and test to "making student assessments available to parents and students for review" to save hundreds of trees and the cost of printing thousands of pages a week besides the countless hours teachers would be standing in front of copy machines. I received NO response from April Treece, Paul Strange, or the superintendent. I received "thank you for your comments from Dick Allen, a "will review it" from Linda Mayo and a lengthy letter from Gary Eberhart. So who is listening and paying attention to classroom teachers.
Gary Eberhart's wife Michelle was a teacher. He'd better respond to teachers or he'll never hear the end of it at home! LOL!
Ladymar- Believe it or not, there was teacher input on the assessment decision. The Math Curriculum specialist held meetings with secondary school math and science department heads and then held a joint meeting with involved parents and those department heads to work up a solution.
Do the department heads constitute teacher input? I'm not sure what rank and file teachers would think about this. I do know that the department heads who were at the meeting had reservations, and I don't think they walked away satisfied with the final outcome.
Did the district move forward with the new policy anyway? Yes.
Will there be uniform enforcement of this new policy by every school and teacher? Doubtful.
When this item was first brought up at the superintendent's PAC meeting, the district administration said it couldn't mandate this policy--which the parents wanted--because they don't make mandates.
What ended up happening was that things were pushed through the system in a half-baked manner and then voted on a board meeting after school had let out for summer.
Despite the flawed policy, many parents were very happy with the decision to have "formative" tests handed back.
Personally, I feel that if the teachers knew how high a priority it was for parents to have access to these tests, they could have been able to work up a policy that might have been more to their liking.
Instead, we have a policy that the teachers don't believe in and likely won't change a thing.
Typical for the MDUSD.
Thank you for the info. I don't feel that the math and science department heads should have spoken for the English, History-Social Science, Foreign language, etc. departments. One problem is that middle schools and high schools both use the same adopted texts and test materials. The cost of printing... the type of formative quizzes not on paper... Many flaws...
Post a Comment