President's Message at Special Board Meeting
Good Evening,
Before the board begins to examine the future of TVUSD LCAP Actions and Services, I wanted to provide a reminder of what TVEA brought to the district in our consultation meetings last year for the 2016-17 LCAP.
TVEA’s two major ideas were presented in the spirit of being cost neutral and cost effective.
First, we suggested that individual school sites be involved in determining the most effective actions and services for their unduplicated students. As the practitioners who deliver curriculum and support to students, our members are primary stakeholders and should be engaged in the LCAP process early and often. Yes we are one unified district, yet each site has different needs in their student population.
TVEA believed we were heard when the board authorized TVUSD’s 2016-17 LCAP Plan to include “LCAP Site Advisories” as a listed Action and Service at an estimated cost of $0 dollars. I encouraged TVUSD to utilize the August beginning of the school year to start this process. Here we are about to cross into February and there appears to be no progress in establishing site advisories.
The second idea we brought forward both in the two official consultation meetings and in many other meetings with district officials and board members pertains to the distribution of LCAP personnel.
Since economically disadvantaged, English Learner, and Foster Youth students generate district LCAP revenue, we suggested that actions and services be targeted toward the sites with the highest percentage or number of the Unduplicated Pupils. Adopting this concept would have been strategic and potentially cost effective as well.
Yet the district and board chose an LCAP plan to support “All Students Learning” and spread personnel out across ALL sites.
Despite TVUSD’s limited LCAP funds, our LCAP plan is comparatively personnel rich and arguably costly with an estimate of $96,000 for each employees’ salary and benefits.
It is unfortunate that our LCAP Specialists may now be displaced if this large increase in personnel is finally recognized as unsustainable. On behalf of our potentially impacted members, I hope the district and board will be both fiscally realistic and strategic in the long term moving forward.
