First school board meeting of year rife with budget news

A little over an hour into Tuesday night’s school board meeting, Justin Frese, the district’s assistant superintendent for business, took center stage and painted yet another grim picture of the fiscal future for the Valley’s schools. Frese laid out a painful scenario for $2.5 million worth of cuts by the end of January.
In response, Frese, school district staff and the school board have agreed to hold a series of budget workshops over the next five months to educate the public on how the district spends its money before making recommendations and lowering the boom at the final meeting in January.
Occurring in September, October and November, the first three “Budget 101” meetings will be widely promoted to garner as much public participation as possible. Board members want the public to have every opportunity to learn what’s at stake and help make these hard decisions. At the December meeting, staff recommendations for cuts will be heard and at the meeting in January, the board will approve the final cuts. The public is encouraged to attend as many sessions as possible.
To enhance communication between the school board, school district and the public, board president Dan Gustafson is to prepare advanced agendas for the budget meetings to keep everyone in the loop. It was also suggested that the agendas and other pertinent budget information be posted to the district Web site for general consumption.
On a more positive note, Frese switched gears to give the facilities report and mentioned a recent application for a new clean renewable energy bond. His staff is also investigating the benefits of going solar as well as talking with Chevron about the possibility of tapping into a little known “hot well” on the Altimira campus that might be used to heat the school.
Frese also outlined some of the work his technology staff had undertaken over the summer, including upgrading each and every teacher’s laptop computer as well as making enhancements to computer labs that will be ready in time for school.
In the earlier part of the meeting, Dr. Pam Martens, Superintendent of the Sonoma Valley Unified School District, announced that all future board meetings would be held at the Community Meeting Room, located at 177 First Street West, which will allow for the live television broadcast of meetings on SVTV Comcast Channel 27.
Martens said that her major goal and focus areas for this year are working to find better ways to improve student achievement and social and academic success for students. One of the ways to accomplish this goal was illustrated by Maite Iturri, Principal at El Verano Elementary School, who gave a presentation on the school’s new preschool.
Opened last December, the preschool graduated its first class last June and is flourishing, with a new class of 24 students lined up to start next week. Iturri led the audience through the students’ day by way of a video presentation. By year’s end the students, many of whom entered the program with little or no English language skills, graduated with tools to prepare them for kindergarten. Iturri and her staff will continue to check on last year’s class to see how they fare when compared to their classmates.
Iturri also pointed out that in exchange for a no-cost preschool program for their children, parents are expected to invest time to learn and be involved in their academic career. The board unanimously approved the contract for El Verano’s preschool for the coming year.
Scheduled School Board Meetings:
August 25, 2009
September 8, 2009
September 22, 2009
October 13, 2009
October 27, 2009
November 10, 2009
November 17, 2009
December 8, 2009
January 12, 2010
February 9, 2010
March 9, 2010
April 13, 2010
May 11, 2010
June 15, 2010