School Board Public Comments
Good Evening,
Over the past few years, Lori Ordway Peck has been speaking to an impending financial shortfall. Despite this, executive cabinet members and the Board have not made any changes in how business is conducted in the Temecula Valley Unified School District.
Regarding the TVUSD LCAP, despite a lack of causal evidence and data that shows implemented programs have been effective, TVUSD created approximately 60 new positions, six times the amount of our neighbor MVUSD who receives slightly more supplemental dollars, and nearly double that of Hemet Unified School district, who receives substantially more supplemental funds.
Here are a few reasons why I state that there has been a lack of evidence and data to support the structure of the current TVUSD LCAP plan. First, Goal One in the Annual Update section states: TVUSD students will receive increased quality and/or quantity of instruction in Special Education, Mathematics, English Learners, Socioeconomically Disadvantaged, and Foster Youth. In total, there are 12 Expected and Actual Annual Measurable Outcomes. Out of the 12 Actual Annual Measurable Outcomes, five did not have measurable outcomes. The TVUSD LCAP contains statements such as, “No consistent measure…Data was not collected…High School and Geometry Students were not given the math district semester assessment…No API score calculated…Middle School English Scores on Language Arts end of semester assessments was not calculated…” Also, two of the 12 Actual Annual Measurable Outcomes did not have baseline data collected. Now, for a district that likes to brag about how it looks at data, this is concerning. By my review, 7 out of 12 areas either did not have annual data collected or any benchmarks created. That is 58% of the Actual Annual Measurable Outcomes with no data at all. How can TVUSD actually measure, evaluate, and determine what is working to make effective decisions when more than 50% of the goals have no actual data?
The next goal states: TVUSD Students will receive increased opportunities to have enrollment in a broad area of study, electives, and CTE classes. In this area, there were five Expected and Actual Annual Measurable Outcomes. Again, two out of five target outcomes state, “A consistent measure was not developed to gather data…data was unavailable due to inaccurate CTE tags in our student information system…” One area actually decreased from the prior year.
In the midst of an impending budget deficit, and without appropriate, accurate data, TVUSD made costly additions to the LCAP actions and services by hiring more LCAP personnel. It is unfortunate an unsustainable model based on inconsistent and unreliable data may now need to be completely restructured which will undoubtable have costly ripple effects for our members.