By Marsha Sutton
Source: April 24, 2008 Carmel Valley News
Like a moth drawn to a flame, I keep coming back to the Del Mar Union School District and its mounting challenges.
Seeing the glass as half-full rather than half-empty, I find the problems facing the district to be opportunities for much-needed improvement rather than symptoms of an irreversible slide into educational despair, as the doom-and-gloom naysayers are predicting.
Critics of the current school board have suggested that the loss of former DMUSD superintendent Tom Bishop, whose contract was bought out in February, is ruinous for the district. But in fact, the release of Bishop offers a unique chance to modify the way the district previously conducted its business, which has been characterized as secretive, autocratic, divisive, and in some aspects ultimately unworkable.
Built upon shaky foundations, the enrichment program, tied as it is to the district’s labor contract, is perhaps one of the district’s biggest challenges. The principle of the program is phenomenal; the implementation under Bishop’s tenure was not.
It all started about six years ago, with preparation time for teachers.
According to Rodger Smith, DMUSD director of human resources and facilities planning, “Classroom teacher prep time is guaranteed in the collective bargaining contract.”
A juicy perk, that time to prepare for lessons – 120 minutes each week for teachers of grades 1-3 and 180 minutes per week for grades 4-6 teachers – is provided within the school day, not before or after school.
Calling it “a significant benefit,” Smith said he didn’t know of any other district that offers such a prep-time guarantee.
To accommodate this lovely bonus, something needed to be done with students while their classroom teachers were otherwise occupied.
Voila! Enrichment teachers could step into the breach and take the students while classroom teachers engage in prep time.
Snag. According to Smith, all teachers must be certificated. “If enrichment teachers are teaching, they must have a valid California teaching credential authorizing them to teach the subject(s) for which they are providing instruction,” he said in an email.
So rather than hire excellent, available, highly qualified artists, musicians, scientists or technology experts who have subject knowledge in abundance but lack a teaching certificate, the district must find instructors in these subjects who are full-fledged teachers, entitled to all the rights of other teachers on staff, including job security through tenure and pay according to the certificated teachers’ salary schedule.
The more students, the more costly enrichment teachers to cover for the classroom teachers during prep time. This means money to pay the salaries of all those enrichment teachers who don’t come cheap when they all must be certificated.
Smith called the prep-time guarantee “pretty expensive.” Others have called it fiscally irresponsible. With the district’s projected need for 31 enrichment teachers this coming school year, at an estimated $75,000 each, that little prep-time perk is expected to cost the district a whopping $2,325,000 this coming year.
The Solana Beach School District requires that only one of its five enrichment programs – music – have credentialed instructors. The other four – computer lab, science, art, and P.E. – are taught by instructional aides who are classified rather than certificated employees, according to Bill Banning, SBSD’s assistant superintendent of administrative services and human resources.
Banning said the salaries for instructional aides are generally less than those of credentialed teachers, but their tenure rights are similar.
Although Banning said it is “ingrained in the culture” that teachers use the time students are in enrichment classes to prepare for lessons, there is no prep-time guarantee in Solana Beach’s labor contract. This gives Solana Beach greater flexibility, more financial stability in lean times, and fewer staffing headaches.
Curious that Del Mar would enforce such costly, rigorous standards when Solana Beach offers quality enrichment taught by teachers who need not be credentialed.
But Smith indicated there was no way to skirt around the issue, stating, “If other districts are assigning non-certificated staff to ‘tech,’ they may be violating the law as I understand it.”
He elaborated, “It should be noted, however, that the term ‘teach’ is often applied incorrectly when interactions between adults and students at a public school are described. If an individual is independently planning instruction, carrying out instruction, and evaluating student progress relative to that instruction, then they must have a valid California teaching credential that authorizes them to do so.”
“If an individual is conducting these activities and they do not possess the required credential, the certificated administrator who is responsible for directing that individual to do so may experience adverse actions up to and including revocation of their credential by the state of California.”
Smith added that “there are regular situations in public schools, however, where non-certificated individuals are assigned to ‘review and/or reinforce’ previously taught concepts and/or skills with students under the general direction of a certificated teacher; this type of activity is not regarded as ‘teaching’ and therefore does not require that the individual conducting the activity possess a teaching credential.”
Even “monitored” instruction, where a certificated employee is in the room with a non-credentialed instructor during lessons is not considered acceptable by Smith.
“Students have to be under the supervision of credentialed teachers,” Banning agreed, but he did not believe a credentialed teacher actually needed to be present in the room during the lesson. He said having credentialed employees nearby, on the campus and in the vicinity, sufficed.
So is Solana Beach in violation of state law? Doubtful, with experienced leader Leslie Fausset in charge. Or is Del Mar over-the-top in its strict application of California’s Education Code?
Del Mar’s pickle
The way out of Del Mar’s pickle – being forced, through contractual obligations, to fund salaries for teachers the district cannot afford to pay – was to place the burden on the parents.
Enter the Del Mar Schools Education Foundation.
“The Foundation was founded to raise the necessary funds to provide Del Mar Union School District students with enrichment programs such as science, music, art, technology and physical education,” states the DMSEF Web site.
Having parents pay for a contractual requirement made by the district to the teachers is perfect – and outrageous – illustration of what’s gone wrong in Del Mar under the former superintendent and his previous rubber-stamp school board.
Bishop’s threats that schools would lose enrichment teachers if parents didn’t pony up more money fast, turned out to be empty. The district’s grossly inappropriate strong-arm tactics appear to be nothing more than a shake-down to squeeze more bucks out of parents, when the district was on the hook all along.
If parents didn’t raise the money, the district was still required to do something with the kids during teacher prep time. And according to the district, whatever it was had to be with a certificated teacher.
So the arrangement between the school district and the foundation from the beginning was solidly linked to the funding of the enrichment program – which was needed to relieve the district of its contractual obligation to fund salaries it couldn’t afford.
Did no one consider what might happen if parent donations fell off? The whole house of cards was destined to collapse if one piece became unstable.
When Bob Gans took over as president of the foundation last year, a few months after the new DMUSD school board was seated, a spirit of openness and cooperation seemed to replace mistrust and conflict. After allegations surfaced against prior leaders of the foundation of mismanaging funds, undue secrecy, and an all-too-cozy relationship with the school district, Gans’ appointment was welcome relief.
The hard-working foundation board members (and there are few others more hard-working than these dedicated individuals) tackled their volunteer efforts with renewed vitality.
The change won over many critics and infused the community with a sense that the housecleaning would bring greater stability to the district’s educational programs through increased charitable donations.
But success turned out to be elusive, and initial confidence may have been premature.
Like a child on the playground who takes his marbles and goes home if he can’t get his way, Gans recently threatened to suspend the foundation’s operations unless the school board gives him what he wants.
In an April 2 letter to trustees, Gans objected to the district’s reluctance to promise to assign all of this year’s donations to next year’s programs – a move that would have betrayed the promise given to this year’s donors who thought that at least a portion of their donations would be applied to this year’s programs.
Apparently accustomed to operating under the old rules – which allowed Bishop to dictate to the foundation how much money he needed, from which communities, and by when – the foundation now seems at a loss as to how to function independently without explicit direction from the school board.
The school board, under advice from legal counsel last year, rightfully declined to overstep its authority by inserting itself into foundation business. No more telling the foundation how much to raise, how to raise it, how to donate, or when.
On April 15, the foundation presented the school district with a check for $522,920.20 which Gans said represents the gross amount of money raise from this year’s Annual appeal. The foundation gave the money to the school district to be disbursed according to the donors’ wishes, which were as follows:
Ashley Falls
Carmel Del Mar
Del Mar Heights
Del Mar Hills
Ocean Air
Sage Canyon
Sycamore Ridge
Torrey Hills
$62,877.80
$45,187.00
$78,875.00
$63,550.00
$68,005.00
$90,659.26
$52,925.00
$60,841.14
This averages about $65,365 per school.
In March, the Solana Beach Foundation for Learning donated $409,602.40 to the Solana Beach School District. Divided among its six schools, this averages about $68,267 per school.
If Solana Beach can raise more money per school using their friendly, site-driven approach, then why can’t Del Mar? Certainly Solana Beach’s fundraising style generates significantly less animosity and dissension.
Further complicating the issue are Gans’ repeated public comments that donations are down because some parents question why money for enrichment programs is needed when the district had enough to buy out Bishop’s contract. Flawed logic, of course, which Gans does little to dispel.
First, Bishop’s $300,000 buyout will take place over three fiscal years, not all at once. Second, withholding money from children’s educational programming to protest the departure of Bishop punishes no one but the kids. Third, people who haven’t donated by now, so late in the year, are unlikely to donate anyway. Fourth, the only plausible reason to continue to talk about Bishop in this context is to inflame the public.
In his April 2 letter, Gans suggests the foundation may be unable to accomplish its mission “under the current environment. Perhaps its easier to find scapegoats to blame than to admit some fundamental flaw in management style or fundraising ability.
Whether it’s negotiating in public, making demands, or outright blackmail, it stinks. And the school board should call his bluff. Let the foundation shut down; it’s gone sour anyway.
The DMSEF desperately needs brand new leadership, a complete overhaul to harness the energy and enthusiasm of devoted board members and volunteers who truly want to help Del Mar’s kids without the burden of political gotcha games and historical baggage undermining their efforts.
The Del Mar Schools Education Foundation will consider suspending operations at its May 6 meeting. Perhaps this can be viewed as an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and begin anew, like a phoenix rising from the ashes – because at some point, trying to fix a botched mess is harder than trashing the whole thing and rebuilding it from scratch the right way.
This may mean going back to the negotiating table with Del Mar’s teachers to re-open the issue of prep time.
It may mean clarifying what can be done with students during prep time, and developing options that give the district more latitude regarding the certificated teacher issue for enrichment programs.
It may mean a site-based, bottom-up restructuring of a new Del Mar schools foundation, like the Solana Beach model, that upends the previous top-down demands given to each school’s community during Bishop’s era.
Or it may even mean a re-evaluation of the enrichment program altogether, perhaps giving each school the leeway to decide for itself which programs it needs, wants and can afford.
Dissolving the current Del Mar Schools Education Foundation, with its blemished history and myopic vision, would be a drastic measure that carries with it a number of benefits. Let them take their marbles and go home. It’s time to stop the threats. This school district deserves better.
