Balanced Progams for an High Performing District

Berryessa Union School District has made tremendous growth during recent years. The credit goes to all of our dedicated employees, including office staff, library techs, counselors, teacher advisers, reading tutors, and teachers.

At the same time as all of this progress has been made, the district has been forced to cut 20% of its budget. 90% of the district's budget goes to salaries and benefits for employees, as it should, and as a result, budget cuts necessitate reducing the district workforce.

The 2010-2011 budget approved by the Board of Trustees resulted in a reduction of more than 30 teachers and the equivalent of 12 classified staff. The dollar savings in the budget came from 6.8% savings in teaching salaries and 6.5% savings in classified salaries.

My goal has been to maintain balance in our district. I have fought to keep our district libraries open, our top-notch elementary music program intact, our middle school counseling available, and our class sizes at a reasonable level. In all of these areas, we have had to sacrifice a bit, but I am very proud that all of these services will still be available to our children next year. In order to make this work, some other district services were forced to endure some reductions, including school clerks, business office staff, and reading tutors.

I am confident that our excellent employees will continue to find ways to provide superior service to our students even as they sacrifice for our district budget. That said, schools cannot continually be expected to cut services in a way that is transparent to students, parents, and the community. In my second term on the Board, I will continue to work with our elected officials in Sacramento to fight for adequate funding so that we can bring back services that have been cut and stop sacrificing our children and our employees.