There is also an online petition started by Montclaire that parents can sign at :
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/ 1/respond- CUSD-budget- dilemmas.
Here is the e-mail from their president that I received on Thursday night:
Last night the Montclaire PTA Membership met to discuss the current CUSD budget crisis. As most of you know from a Phil Quon letter sent home in mid-December (http://sites. google.com/ a/cusdschools. org/cusdbudget09 -10/documents/ budgetletter12. 17.09.pdf? attredirects= 0), in order to close a $5 million budget deficit, the Board of Education is seriously considering eliminating the Class Size Reduction program in grades 1-3. They will be voting to increase class size to 30 to 1, an increase of 50% from the current 20 to 1 ratio.
While the parents understand that something must be done to close the deficit, the concern is that the CUSD has not thoroughly explored all options and are instead choosing an "easy" solution, and not one that aligns with the community's values of fostering academic excellence. We would like the district to slow down and thoroughly investigate all options before making a final choice. We have voted to make a statement from the Montclaire PTA membership at the Board of Education meeting this coming Monday, January 11th. We are currently drafting the statement and I will forward it to all of you once it is finalized.
While we are hoping this helps, it would have considerably more weight if other PTA/PTO units within the district step forward with similar concerns. I realize that Monday is quickly approaching, but I believe that a vote at the unit executive level to support a similar statement from each school could be achieved before the meeting.
In addition, Montclaire has prepared an online petition that would allow your members to have a voice by signing the petition. I ask that you, as school leaders, forward this online petition to your members and encourage them to respond. Montclaire will take the lead in accumulating and forwarding the petition information to the district. The link to the petition is http://www.thepetit ionsite.com/ 1/respond- CUSD-budget- dilemmas.
Again, I encourage you to pass this information along to your membership. The more parents who sign the petition and speak out, the more we will be heard.
Thanks,
Carol Snell, Montclaire PTA President
This is an excerpt from an e-mail I received about the budget negotiations.
One union is willing to negotiate with the district to take up to 5 furlough days, providing those days are student school days and not days that the students are not at school (i.e. student learning days). The union is not willing to give salary concessions as they know that once they give that up, it will be permanent and it will affect people’s retirement. The information passed along from those in attendance that have gone to teachers meetings at their schools has been that the teachers want to do nothing and let the parents get upset about the increase in class size and the dirty campuses and the closed libraries. I don’t know what they think that we as parents can do, since once a paid position is eliminated, it cannot by law be filled with volunteers, so the libraries would not be allowed to remain open with parent volunteers if the media clerk position goes away. The only thing that the parents can do is to pay for that position, which we at Cupertino Middle School will not be able to do. Furthermore, the union was very upset that all three unions and the district administration is willing to try to come up with some changes to the budget, but these do not include the superintendent and the other top two administrators. They have a contract and are not willing at this point to renegotiate their contract for lower wages/concessions. FYI, the raises that they got last year were not considered “raises” but considered to be step and ladder increases that are in their contract. We all felt it would be a nice first step if the superintendent, who makes close to $300,000/year, would take a pay cut.
In conclusion, the word from we got last Wednesday night was there was no way to save class size reduction in grades 1-3. There is not enough cuts that can be made to save the $3 million and if it didn’t go away next year, it would probably the year after. They also said that it would be an all or nothing with the class size reduction because it would be too difficult to do a partial next year and then a bit more the following year. They also said that it looked like except for special education, summer school was gone unless the parents really put up a stink about it going away. With the furlough days, we can save approximately $500,000/day, which could save these other programs. The biggest thing that they felt that we could do as a union was go in Monday and ask the Superintendent to do his part and take a pay cut or join in if everyone else takes furlough days.
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