Several of you have commented that you can’t figure out what I stand for based on the generalities expressed herein, and certainly, the limited number of BLOG posts don’t help.

I agree completely.

So – Here’s a synopsis of some of the big issues:

1. Data Center – do not agree that District should spend any money, let alone Prop S money to help fund a District Data Center at Serra High School. Kids will lose as Prop S money is siphoned off from the use approved by the taxpayers, namely, repair and maintenance of specified school projects.

2. PLA – I am against the PLA. Without quantifiable data, I go by my Company’s experience that shows you add about 40% to the bid by using PLA’s – kids lose and it’s not the District job to fund or provide for SD workers but to prioritize the benefits to the kids in the District – they are the client, their education is the Districts sole deliverable

3. Parcel Tax – Don’t waste money pursing an idea that won’t pass. Not only have taxpayers continually voted down tax increases, but, there is no confidence that a parcel tax, a regressive tax, with money delivered to the general fund, will change the Districts ability to properly manage the funds they have.

4. Arizona Immigration Law – I believe in free speech for all. On your time and at your expense. The District Board meeting is not the place for a bully pulpit, especially during this budget crisis. The focus needs to be on funding the classrooms, providing the tools the teachers need, and lowering class size. Not making political statements. Plus, if the resolution is printed and sent out, our research shows it would be the annual copy budget of 2 schools.

5. A-G requirements – important considerations with a variety of pending State legislation that needs to be watched closely. Once gain, the “arts” are being challenged for elimination and to get around the A-G requirements: there is a pending State bill (AB 2446) to eliminate the “arts” as an A-G requirement. We need to raise our voice to stop the ongoing threat of the elimination of the “arts” as part of the curriculum.

6. Budget Reform – some details, limited by time and space….. STOP DEFICIT SPENDING, SPEND WHAT YOU HAVE WISELY, DEVELOP A 5 YEAR STRATEGIC BUSINESS PLAN with contingencies for the “surprises” such as last minute legislation that changes revenue formulas and budgeting oversight requirements.  Plan for enrollment decline, changes in revenue, changes in expenses, and windfalls and “surprises”. Prioritize to the classroom and tools the teachers need. Develop a concrete and comprehensive implementation plan that includes all levels of participants to maximize the investment and shorten the Return on Investment (ROI). Example of poor implementation – i21 Smart Boards. i21 – great idea, nice windfall, poor planning and poor implementation of equipment procurement and installation. Result: wasted money, kids lose.

7. Special Interest priorities versus kids first – i.e. cutting 5 student-teacher days from the school year the next 2 years followed by a 7% pay raise for all collective bargaining units – hhhmmm How does this demonstrate a kids first priority?

That’s all for now – hope this helps…. Vote on June 8th!

“Successful strategic planning:

• leads to action
• builds a shared vision that is values-based
• is an inclusive, participatory process in which board and staff take on a shared ownership
• accepts accountability to the community
• is externally focused and sensitive to the organization’s environment
• is based on quality data
• requires an openness to questioning the status quo
• is a key part of effective management.” Guiding principles of strategic planning, from The Support Centers of America.

Good business practices say we need to do a 3,4, and 5 year strategic business plan that INCLUDES a solid financial plan. Unfortunately, the District is only required to do a 3 year plan, which is actually more a financial statement projection than a true strategic business plan. In addition, the County Board of Education, which has oversight, ONLY has financial oversight and not academics, or stupidity oversight. As long as the District can show it’s solvent, they can not intervene regardless of the methods by which the District got there. Namely, the District could cut any and all academic programs and pass the oversight if the revenues match the expenses with the legally required reserves.

This is a HUGE problem in today’s severe economic climate whereby revenues to the District from the State are expected to continue to decrease. My research says, in 2015, we may get back to 2007 levels. The most current financial projection I saw posted from the District, shows, without Board intervention to cut expenses, an 89 million dollar deficit for 2010/11 (which we know, AND, an over 200 million dollar deficit for 2011/12 – which nobody is talking about, AND, another huge deficit in 2012/13).  So, how can a budget without a 5 year strategic plan, in point of fact, not really even a 3 year strategic business plan, truly meet the criteria established above (from the Support Centers of America) and help us manage and understand the futurity of those decisions being made today?

Can’t be done – yet, the District still has no strategic plan in place, nor, as far as I can tell: no plan to plan. This is my concern about a lack of leadership and lack of vision that is desperately needed to protect our kids into the future and to stop the annual, seemingly indiscriminate, hacking of budget line item expenses WITHOUT looking at the effects, ramifications, and possible alternatives and solutions. Again, how do we protect our kids and provide for a quality education K-12?

STRATEGIC BUSINESS PLANNING! We must plan for an uncertain future.

To add another apropos quote:  “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Benjamin Franklin

The parcel tax is the latest attempt by this School Board to raise taxes to cover the school district budget gap caused by State cutbacks.  Last month, the School Board unanimously passed a resolution asking for the State to raise our taxes.  Now, in addition to the request to raise our State taxes, our School Board is asking San Diegan’s to increase contributions to backfill their fiscal mismanagement.  Without greater discretion and purview – kids loose – period. In upcoming posts, we will talk about possible solutions that are available NOW without raising taxes.

In addition to paying for a consultant, They wasted money on a flawed report. I have a real issue with the poll conducted that appears to support a parcel tax.  The poll is flawed and the numbers have been manipulated.  The school district reported that 500 San Diegans were polled, however only 115 answered the question regarding the parcel tax assessment.  These types of results do not merit further district monies being appropriated towards this proposed ballot measure. The dollars spent on consultants and pollsters are another example of wasted money in a time of crisis. The consulting fees alone could hire multiple teachers for several years instead of having been spent on a flawed and biased poll. The following is from the Union Tribune Jan 30:

School tax survey had crucial flaws

The San Diego Unified School District survey results reported by Maureen Magee (“Parcel tax may be headed for ballot,” Jan. 27) left me scratching my head. From years of observing voter opinion on tax issues, it just didn’t pass the smell test.

The Taxpayers Association contacted John Nienstedt, president of Competitive Edge and a pollster well-respected by people with a wide variety of political views. He pointed out that while the poll appears to have a statistically valid sample of 500 respondents, one has to read the fine print. Evidently, not all the questions were asked of all the people polled. Some questions were answered by only 115 respondents. Pollsters will tell you this produces a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 9 percent. No one should draw any conclusions based on this margin of error.

Chula Vista relied on a faulty poll when it put a sales tax measure on the ballot. It failed miserably, wasting taxpayer dollars it could ill afford to lose.

But even accepting the results at face value, they aren’t good news when discussing a measure that needs a two-thirds majority to pass. Conventional wisdom says you need to start with a minimum 70 percent favorable response to have a chance of passage. The poll was taken in the absence of organized opposition, and the favorable responses will only drop as the election approaches.

If board members base decisions on these findings, they will repeat Chula Vista’s mistake.

The Taxpayers Association previously expressed its opinion about spending the funds to engage a consultant on this issue in the first place. Enough taxpayer money has already been wasted on this useless poll, let alone a pointless ballot initiative.

MIKE McDOWELL   Chairman   San Diego County Taxpayers Association

We need to tell this board ‘enough is enough,’ and elect someone who is prepared to roll up his sleeves, dig into the details, and make the hard business decisions to protect the sanctity of the classroom.

Welcome!

Like many parents, I am alarmed by the decline in quality education that the School Board of the San Diego Unified School District has allowed to occur. The Board seems more concerned with micromanaging, defending its turf and political posturing than attending to our children’s needs. The current Board seems lost and confused (they couldn’t even figure out what process to use to balance a budget let alone the very details of balancing a budget), they are working without vision, without a clear plan to lead the District in the 21^st century.  The Board needs to refocus its attention to the needs of our children – period. That means rolling up their sleeves, pulling apart the budget, and re-prioritizing expenditures to develop a strategic vision and plan for financial and educational leadership. Our children and their good steward teachers need to be the priority!

Whether you have kids in the school district or not, you are paying hard earned money into the district and that money is not being managed well. I truly believe that your mandatory tax dollar investment should be just that – an investment into our children and thereby our City, our State and our Country’s future and NOT to special interests or “adults”.

I am not a politician. I don’t owe anybody anything. I’m just a parent (who happens to be an older parent of younger kids in the system) — a hard working dad doing his best to provide his family a good quality of life and education. I would bring to the job of School Board Member, real-world business experience based on an understanding of the real world children of today (my kids are 10 and 8). I have a history of making financial decisions that benefit my company, its employees, and keep us on the cutting edge of our industry and I don’t see any of that with the composition or behavior of the current Board.

I speak from personal experience, not simply news reports. I poured over the District’s budget myself and went to Board meetings, Board budget workshops and Board sponsored town hall meetings to see how taxpayer dollars were being spent.  I questioned the District and spoke with a senior district official about discrepancies and just some of the unexplained budget line items I found. The District  response was “Steve – Don’t sweat the details.” The current School Board Trustee basically told me the onus was on me to gather any information I wanted and she was unwilling to offer any sort of transparency or participate in any Q&A to my inquiries.

As founder, President, and CEO of a successful local business that has actually done Pro Bono work for the District that resulted in over 9 MILLION DOLLARS of grant money (www.tvmagic.tv), I assure you that I “Do sweat the details” and I sweat them every day. That’s when I decided I would run for the School Board. Clearly, there is no leadership, no vision, and no comprehensive strategic plan to provide for our children and their education either now or into the future. This budget crisis isn’t just one year, but, will continue into the foreseeable future – and we need a plan.

This all said – I look forward to hearing from you on the school issues that are important to you.  Please explore this BLOG and check it often for new information and events. I need your vote and your participation. In the coming days we will be launching a comprehensive web site at:   www.rosenforschools.com and welcome your visit and exploration of my site as well.

However, most importantly, I welcome your feedback, your input and any constructive ideas you have to better serve the educational needs of our children, now, and into the future. Remember, hope is not a strategy.

Steve Rosen

Stay tuned for regular posts about the current budget crisis and the special interest priorities that negatively effect our children, along with:

• discussions on the various proposed budgeting cuts, the ramifications to our children, and what I see as options to protect the integrity of our children s education above all else
• budgeting methodology: Board says Zero Based, District recommends Priority Based – what’s it all mean?
• unfunded mandates – what are they, what do the mean and what do they cost
• the hidden budget items including defined benefits, compensation, and health benefits along with NTE’s and internal controls
• “pink slips”
• the bi-partisan issue of Race to the Top (ARRA) money coupled with the confused state of our State: SB X5-1 vs AB X5-8.

I hope to have my promised meeting with the District financial folks soon to go through a whole host of budget questions I have and hopefully validate several concerns along with several solutions that are referenced in the Budget Book and workshop presentations.

Join me – let’s keep the conversations lively and informative, and, most important, protect our children’s education. They our the future of our Country, the future of businesses, they represent our national brain trust, and they are  the future of our standing in the global sociopolitical and economical environment.

Reading suggestions:

Race to the Top and latest SDUSD Budget Workshop:

1. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=abx5_8&sess=CUR&house=B&author=brownley
2. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sbx5_1&sess=CUR&house=B&author=romero
3. http://www.boarddocs.com/ca/sandi/Board.nsf/bed78c7a5382b7b98725731b0060c8db/f3d91a853375f576872576500059b151/$FILE/SDUSD%20Board%201216%20Budget%20Workshop%20REVISED%20121609%20FINAL%203.pdf

Cheers: Steve Rosen

For information and copies of the documents follow these links:

1. This is the page where the latest documents can be found and downloaded and reviewed:

http://www.sandi.net/20451010611403253/FileLib/browse.asp?a=374&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&c=56872&20451010611403253Nav=|&NodeID=1362

2. This is the latest in staff cuts – BRACE:

http://www.sandi.net/20451010611403253/lib/20451010611403253/_files/SDUSD_BRACE_Reduction_Options_111309_final.pdf

3. This is the PowerPoint presentation that will be presented at the Board budget workshop on Tuesday, 11/17:

http://www.sandi.net/20451010611403253/lib/20451010611403253/_files/SDUSD_Board_Workshop_Budget_Presentation__111709_FINAL_4.pptx

After I spend a little time on these documents, I’ll post my thoughts.

In addition, I’ve been slogging through massive amounts of District and Board material, going page by page, document by document, from the last several Board meetings looking at everything the District is doing and approving. More on that coming up as well.

Steve Rosen

After 5 years of watching the deteriorating economic situation with our San Diego public schools, I decided I need to take a much more active role in proactive advocacy. Having started a family later in life and as an active international business person, I felt compelled and called to get involved.

This BLOG is one of many things I am doing to try and gather information to speak intelligently about our schools and the ongoing budget situation. What a mess!! Who loses – our children are the biggest losers and stand to lose much much more if we do not unite and work together to both express our feelings, our opinions, offer suggestions, and get involved.

With this BLOG – I welcome your involvement and as we move forward, I will work hard to post relevent and pertinent information, share ideas, comments, and views, and try and provide an informative one-stop shop for information. If you have tried to navigate the webs sites of the District, you have probably become frustrated and disenchanted. I hope to help by providing the URL’s to important documents and discussions of those documents and other “hidden”issues buried deep in the details.

For starters:

http://old.sandi.net/budgetbook.pdf –  The District “Budget Book” – I’m tearing through this and have many unanswered questions and the District seems disinclined to answer

http://old.sandi.net/labor_relations/bargain.html –  The various collective bargaining agreements which are also referenced in the Budget Book

So – take a stand, make your voice heard, let’s get talking!!

Steve Rosen – concerned parent