The trustees of the Southern Humboldt Unified School District held their regular meeting at Redway School on Thursday, Sept. 10. With the temperature in the 90s, Room 17 was very warm and very packed with school staff, presenters from the Humboldt County Office of Education ROP program, and Caldwell, Flores, Winters, Inc. bond election advisors and what appeared to be the entire Alderpoint Volunteer Fire Department.

Customarily, the trustees take public comment on non-agendized items at the beginning of the meeting.

Laura Doyle of Casterlin came to represent five families who have been impacted by the elimination of some bus routes to meet the state demand for cuts in home-to-school transportation. Doyle said she understood the need for cuts but these families were driving an extra 24 miles a day to get their students to the nearest bus stop. The parents have the option of sending their students to Bridgeville, but Doyle said the parents were willing to raise money to fund sending the bus the extra miles, much as they had raised money to pay for a third teacher at Casterlin.

Teacher Dena Rovai said that in the face of the budget cuts teachers are now asking for voluntary contributions from parents, voluntary lab fees and writing grants on their own time to acquire necessary instructional materials for their classes. Teacher Ian Robinson recently got a $500 grant from the Chemistry Association for science materials. Rovai said that she had spent $200 buying materials for her classes.

”We need this stuff. It’s hard to do our job without it,” she said. She said that the teachers feel awkward engaging in so much fundraising and the academic teachers worry about competing with the sports programs and campus clubs for the same community money. She asked the board to give direction to the teachers. “Do you expect us to be fundraisers?” she asked.

Teacher Melinda Bailey brought a tattered English textbook with missing pages to draw attention to the fact that English has not been included in the rotation schedule for the purchase of new textbooks for math, science and social studies. English textbooks have not been replaced since 1990, she said, and it was an embarrassment for the school.

Bailey said there is also concern about Principal Jim Stewart being away from the campus to perform his duties as principal of Casterlin and Agnes Johnson. She said that this is a WASC year, in which the school faces renewal of its accreditation, and she urged the trustees to find money to hire a WASC coordinator.

New Southern Humboldt Teachers Association president Tasha Haller said that the union was looking forward to wrapping up its contract negotiations. She said that the Department of Education is offering $3.5 billion to schools, but that there are lots of regulations that states have to comply with to get the money. She said the governor is urging “educational reform,” but that the teachers want to slow that down because it will mean a “one size fits all” educational model and she said that one size does not fit all. She referred everyone to the California Teachers Association Web site for more information.

John Earp spoke on the behalf of the Alderpoint Volunteer Fire Department. The VFD wants to buy the old school building in Alderpoint to use as an emergency shelter, Red Cross center, training center, classes from CR, tutoring, and community events. Earp said they had raised $30,000 in 14 days for the purchase.

The district’s real estate agent George Rolff was present because he was scheduled to present two other offers for the property and to meet with the board in closed session regarding the Alderpoint and Garberville properties. Rolff and the fire department left the meeting and consulted outside to come up with an official offer that he could present to the trustees in closed session.

While they were doing that, Superintendent Michael McAllister said that he had received a call from CR trustee George Truett that the CR board of trustees would take up the counter offer from the SHUSD trustees at 11 a.m. on the following Monday. McAllister said that there was opposition in Mendocino to the purchase of the old school building in Garberville and Truett had urged that as many SHUSD board members as possible should attend the CR trustees’ meeting.

McAllister also told the trustees that architects had been visiting local school sites to assess their physical condition and make recommendations on whether they could be improved or should be replaced. McAllister said that at some point the state will free up money for building and that facilities in the district were in serious need of some attention. He wanted the district to be prepared to take advantage of that when it became available. He said that the diesel heating systems were outdated and should be replaced, possibly with a solar array. The architects would be required to present a plan for replacement or refurbishment that would pass muster with the Office of Public School Construction.

Trustee Dennis O’Sullivan said that it was time for the trustees to get out their Master Plan.

Greg Tato and Steve Linn of Caldwell, Flores, Winters, Inc. gave a presentation on ways in which money could be raised to pay for better facilities. Tato said that his firm has represented 200 districts in the state in preparing general obligation bond measures and campaigns and that 60 percent of them had been small districts.

Tato said that the district has not participated in State Aid programs for new construction or modernization in quite a while and his firm thought the district could benefit from a “process that aligns school facilities with educational program needs and identified potential funding sources.” He outlined various scenarios in which the district might get aid, grants or loans to repair or replace existing buildings. All of them require some kind of local match, which could be either a bond measure or a parcel tax.

Before mounting a bond or parcel tax measure, Tato said that his firm would help with a survey of voters. He said a scientific survey was impossible because there were too few voters to come up with a statistically valid result. What he proposed was contacting ever voter by phone, mail and at meetings to conduct a survey that would help the trustees determine what the voters would support. The information gained from the survey or poll would guide the trustees in coming up with a clearly defined need. He said it would be a community-based process, with straw polls at meetings.

Tato said that there is still modernization money available. He said also that the nearest date for getting something on the ballot was June, 2010, but getting ready for that was at a minimum a six month to a year process. Tato said that there are not a lot of grants around at this time, but there are a lot of loan programs.

Like the previous firm that presented their plan to the trustees, Tato’s firm doesn’t get paid “until the kids get the money,” he said.

The trustees had a lot of questions for Tato, and for Linn, who is a former client of the firm. They helped him get two bond measures passed when he was superintendent of the Fort Bragg School District. Linn said that his measures were passed at a time when the Fort Bragg economy was depressed. But he was able to put a plan together and to present it to the community as a way to create employment and get money into the local economy. His district found that it saved 70 percent of his energy costs by installing a solar array for heating. They used their bond money to improve their infrastructure, he said. He said that the money from a bond campaign can be used to leverage other money from loans and grants.

The trustees also received a presentation on Work Force Readiness from Lori Breyer, the Regional Occupations Program (ROP) coordinator for the Humboldt County Office of Education. Humboldt ROP is back and ready to provide services for South Fork High School. HROP was forced to discontinue its program at SFHS last year because of budget difficulties but is now guaranteed at least four years of being able to provide occupational education in the district.

Breyer noted that the return of HROP to South Fork meant that the six period day would no longer be required and that SFHS could shift back to the block schedule, which was very popular with teachers and students. She outlined the various occupational education programs that they would be providing for the district. Currently, she said, the top categories in the job market are construction and building trades, health services, investment services, management and innovation, niche marketing and specialty agriculture. She said that HROP would be offering a volunteer firefighting academy as well as other occupational programs.

The trustees also took up the latest budget projections from Superintendent McAllister. The district budget developed and passed in June was made from phantom figures due to the inability of the legislature and the governor to agree on a state budget. When the state finally passed a budget, McAllister said that former Superintendent Clif Anderson came in and worked with McAllister updating the budget. That budget had to be submitted to the Humboldt County Office of Education (HCOE), which refused to okay it unless the district trimmed it by $77,985. HCOE worked with McAllister and his administrative staff to cut that much out, but with what McAllister termed “draconian cuts” to the district. He emphasized that this budget is also far from written in stone as the fiscal situation for the state is changing daily.

Among the cuts projected by this budget for next year is the elimination of five FTE teachers, two one-on-one aides in Special Education, more slashing of the transportation budget, no summer school or summer recreation, deep cuts to art and music, GATE and instructional materials.

”It’s not pleasant,” McAllister said, adding that the district has little choice because they have to come up with a budget that HCOE will accept. He said also that a parcel tax would address the cuts and bring some badly needed money into the district.

Trustee Jim Baker asked about filling the business manager position.

McAllister said there is no money in the budget for that. He said the HCOE is offering their support in budgeting and that thanks to a grant McAllister will be receiving training in school finance.

For this year, McAllister presented the trustees with a recommendation to add a second school nurse at .55 hours per week because a small amount of money had become available.

The school nurses have been a bone of contention on the board for some time. The issue of medical care at school is even more pressing now as the concern about the H1N1 flu virus grows. Nurse Robin Correll is already training school staff in the correct protocols for dealing with flu outbreaks.

Trustee Barbara Lindsay expressed concern about nursing services at the outlying schools, particularly Casterlin. There is a nurse in the Casterlin area that the community there would like to see hired to provide nursing services at that school.

Trustee Paulette Thiele said the Family Partnership Council had met and wanted the second nurse position bumped up to .85. The board has previously approved a .85 addition to nursing hours.

Superintendent McAllister said he wasn’t prepared to go that far because he wanted to make sure that the money was available first and that all the costs had been considered.

Thiele moved that the position be reinstated at .85 hours, but that motion failed. A motion to accept McAllister’s recommendation passed, with Thiele and Tom Mulder opposing.

After the open portion of the meeting adjourned, the trustees retired into closed session to discuss the sale of the Alderpoint property. Board president Susan Thompson gave the report of that meeting. The trustees, through their real estate agent George Rolff, voted to accept the offer of the Alderpoint volunteer firefighters to purchase the old school. The price will be $145,000, with a 45-day escrow period.