Trying to Balance a Budget without Money

As I am sure everyone is aware, we are in the midst of very difficult times. We are trying to balance our budget with the help of our Budget Advisory Committee (BAC) and any other help that we can find. The fact is that we made “reasonable” reductions several years ago and are ONLY left with “unreasonable” options/reductions. NO one likes or supports what we are engaged with at this point. It does and will affect our primary mission with our students. However, in the midst of all this it gets pretty confusing and requires a clear understanding of accounting.

As part of our discussions, you will see on page 16 (and footnote 10 on pg 43) of our audit that we have a fund balance of $72 million. Remembering that accounting principles require us to show left over money in one year (fund balance) before it is used / budgeted in the subsequent year – can be confusing. In fact, we have often talked about “one-time” and federal stimulus funds – which more technically might be called “fund balance” or a portion thereof.

So as a result, we do NOT have $72 million available, since it is essentially spent in the current year and has been budgeted since this past spring for this school year. Or it is part of the state and federal requirements for reserves, etc. The point is that we do have almost $11 million that is in that fund balance that CAN (and we would recommend) be used to resolve our coming budget deficit in 2010-11. In fact, the BAC has been discussing this issue and will give it further consideration this week at their meeting.

We are looking at ALL resources, including our fund balance, to resolve our budget deficit that has been passed to us by those in Sacramento. However, even on our best day, we are well short of the mark and have NO choice but to affect every portion of our operations. As I said at the beginning and have stated before we do NOT like this situation but we cannot avoid making choices to keep this District solvent and maintain the trust and integrity with our community.

Amber Carrow -- California State Teacher of the Year

It was my immense pleasure to attend the STATE celebration of one of our great teachers, Amber Carrow (Chemawa Middle School), along with her principal, Sean Curtin and Riverside County Superintendent Kenn Young. As you know Amber is one of five California State Teacher of the Year honorees. She was honored in a State recognition last night in Sacramento along with the other four teachers. Supporting Amber were two of her colleagues, Michelle Birchak and Joanna Burgess from Chemawa (as I understand it a number of her other colleagues also wanted to be there). Of course, she was also supported by her family and friends.

When it was her opportunity (which was first) Amber gave a short speech regarding the jewels in the Jewelry Department at Nordstrom Department Store. I am working on getting a podcast set up with her speech and will produce it here when it becomes available. Until then I have included a few pictures of Amber and the event.

As Amber is recognized, we should understand that she is not just representing herself but her teaching colleagues from across the Riverside Unified School District. As one is recognized, many are recognized. Congratulations AMBER and thank you to the many teachers and staff members that make it happen every day for our students. Riverside should be proud.

California and Federal funding

California’s application Race to the Top (RTTT) is “in the mail” to Washington, D.C. – which is no surprise. For varied reasons, some districts have and some districts have not signed on to what, at this point, is an unclear but real commitment (i.e., a blank check on district obligations). While many of us would/do support reform of our public education system, I am not sure that RTTT has any promise to get it done.

It will be interesting to see the reaction of the feds to California’s RTTT application. On a national scale, I don’t hear California being mentioned as a likely recipient of RTTT funds – which actually makes sense. If the feds are watching they will see that California has used stimulus (ARRA) funds not to enhance things but to essentially “backfill” state deficits – the net effect being that ARRA has “bailed” the state out not local school districts, local communities, or local people. At the same time, there continues to be evidence that, by any measure, California has one of the lowest commitments of per student funding of any state in the nation (hardly a resounding statement of commitment to educational reform). The other part of this state discussion is already moved off to the 2nd round of RTTT funding (this spring?) – “maybe we will qualify for that.”

The Governor is in a tough spot. He is in his final months of office, and he has not been particularly successful at bringing disparate groups together for commonly supported solutions. Through an “accounting trick” the Governor is promising to “protect” educational funding while reducing the same funding by $250 per student ($11 million to us). What makes us think that we will even have an authentic, balanced 2010-11 budget BEFORE he leaves office as Governor? In a totally incongruous environment -- At the Gubernatorial appointed State Board of Education (SBE) meeting that is asking what “program improvement” school districts are doing to improve and reform the school system – local school district Superintendents are saying, “I am here today to report to SBE, but going home this afternoon to legally balance our budget and layoff staff.”

I don’t know about you, but as I look at all of this from a federal RTTT perspective, I wonder “how in the world” that we would ever expect the feds to make that kind of commitment and investment in California. I suspect that until we begin to show signs and take initiative in California of getting our own house in order, the feds will be slow to sign on to assist us.

The World In Which We Live is Different than the Last Century

I am most interested in the tragedy that has occurred in Haiti -- along with most of the rest of you. However, what I find incredible is how quick things occur and how "close" we have become on this planet. The tragic 7.0 earthquake occur ed in Haiti last Tuesday at 1:53 pm (PST). Within 40 minutes the first Wikipedia site and entry was up and running -- and the Internet was "telling the story." In the next 24 hours there were 800 additions or edits to that same story -- and I won't bore you with the huge number of page loads. As major electronic media outlets began to get the story and tried to report on it -- without reporters in the field -- they provided "unconfirmed reports" that were pictures provided on Twitter pics. As Americans and others were in Haiti and tried to communicate with their family and friends -- and the phones, etc. were out -- the medium of choice was Facebook. And inside 72 hours of the event, I had a Time magazine delivered via US Mail to my home that began telling the story from that perspective.

Amazing communication with incredible timeliness. The challenge for us, as we observe all of this, is to begin to think about our communication and timeliness in schools. Our business fundamentally is about communication of information and its timeliness. How do we change things so that we can provide the same type of connection to our students, constituents and the world? What is your view?

"Protection" of Education

The Governor has promised our "protection" at the beginning of this month in his annual address. For that we are thankful -- I think. Upon closer inspection of the actual budget proposal we see less money to the tune of about $250 per student. That adds up to a loss for us in RUSD of about $10 million. While those in Sacramento would argue this is not a cut -- they just took an one-time reduction and turned it into a reoccurring reduction -- from my perspective it sure feels like a substantial budget reduction that will directly effect our students. Additionally, they are prescribing a small "negative COLA" that results in a loss of another million or so -- "a million here a million there, pretty soon it adds up to real money." These effects move our RUSD current $37 million deficit for 2010-11 to close to a $50 million deficit.

I am not in Sacramento (thank goodness), but we need our Governor and Legislators to "get real" about the state budget and the economy of this state. My concern is both this current budget and what is happening to educational funding. But beyond all of that (which some could argue is self-serving), what is Sacramento's plan for our economy and economic health in a global marketplace. I feel no less concerned when others are sharing the same concern.

Giving $$ Away

As usual, a GREAT event Thursday night as our Riverside education foundation (REEF) gave away over $115,000 in the form of 143 teacher grants -- in less than 1 hour. In addition, there are opportunities for 2 of our teachers to apply for and participate in EarthWatch -- what a tremendous opportunity. On of our prior EarthWatch winners/participants is Amber Carrow who was named as this year's California Teacher of the Year.
As is usual our foundation and community as a whole has stepped forward in difficult times to make things great for our students. As Brian Jaramillo, REEF Vice President, said, "each grant is a seed -- and now we will watch it grow." Great job REEF! You can find them on the web at: http://www.riversideschoolsrule.org/

Mobile platforms in the 21st century learning environment

Frequently, I have people ask me -- what do you think schools will "look like" in the 21st century? The reality is that I don't know -- but I think we have possible clues and insights into some of the possibilities if we continue to be curious and look around.

Recently, I stumbled upon one example/view of one way it could "look." A Texas university, Abilene Christian University (ACU) has launched an initiative to integrate various tools into their learning environment. They have various kinds of information available on their website. However, they also have an interesting 17-18 minute video available that more or less follows the orientation of an incoming freshman to ACU -- if you can put the Apple commercial aside. They have also tried to articulate the changes and differences between the learning and environment with have known in the 20th century with that they anticipate and "see" in the 21st.

While I am not sure that the ACU solution applies to all of us, I can see many of our high schools (and even middle schools) in the future having interconnected systems and applications similar to those demonstrated at ACU.

So what is your best guess?