On February 19th PRJUSD site administrators released a statement that announced administrators’ acceptance of four furlough days to help alleviate the budget crisis facing our schools.  We applaud their action and hope that this portends a commitment to shared sacrifice that we at PRPE have been trumpeting for months. Their statement said in part, “As educational leaders within our school district, we administrators are standing on the principles that our obligation to our students and our community is greater than our own self-interest, and that shared sacrifice requires timely action.”

    As this school year began in August, our students lost over 35 teachers, class sizes have been increased, classroom resources has been slashed and many support personnel have lost their jobs.  To date in the administrative ranks there has been one retirement, one transfer to another district, one reassignment that caused a counselor to lose her job and one psychologist (which is not a supervisory position) laid off.  In the certificated and classified ranks real people with real families have lost their jobs and are standing in the unemployment line. Every certificated and classified employee has been asked to do more with less all year long.  Everyone needs to share the sacrifice that students and certificated and classified employees have been making all year. 

     We propose that administrators join us, as have the classified employees, to find solutions to our financial problems for the 2010-2011 school year so that we can all equally stand “on the principles that our obligation to our students and our community is greater than our own self-interest, and that shared sacrifice requires timely action”.  We hope that administrators can join us in a call for a timely parcel tax so that the community can also share the sacrifice. We share the superintendent’s position (that she has expressed to us many times) that the priorities for the district are the core instructional program and fiscal solvency.  We call for the justification of all district expenditures that occur outside of the regular school day.  We also suggest that anytime schools are not in session there should not be any district or site offices staffed and open except for critical functions. 

     For the 2010-2011 school year, the district is proposing to cut the work year by eight days.  They want to eliminate three teacher preparation days and reduce the school year by a week as well as layoff many more teachers and support personnel.  The governor has proposed a $1.8B cut to district central office budgets in order to help keep the cuts away from the classroom.  Our proposal would help to achieve that goal.  If teachers don’t need preparation time before the start of the school year, then neither do administrators.  If the instructional year can be shortened by five days, then the non-instructional administrative year can be shortened by 20 days.  If there is no summer school there should be no summer administration. From the latest list of proposed cuts presented to the school board on 2/16/10 certificated and classified employees are being asked to accept reductions far exceeding their proportion of the budget. 

     We sincerely hope that administrators, the school board and the community join us in the spirit of equally shared sacrifice with timely action. Please join us and other concerned people as we rally to stop more cuts to education in front of our schools from 7:15 until 7:45am Thursday March 4th. There will also be a rally to support education from Pre-K to university in front of the office of Senator Abel Maldonado in San Luis Obispo from 3:30 until 5pm on the same day. 

Join us as we tell legislators that enough is enough! 

Your PRPE Negotiations Team,

Lisa Tate (Chair) KK, Jim Lynett IHS, Brigid Woods WP, Kathleen Saxby BS, Robert Skinner PRHS, Jenny Martinez LMS