I am outraged that they would spend $60,000 of our money to determine whether or not we would like to give them more money. How might that money be spent instead to benefit the students? How could they possibly judge that their irresponsible spending and duplicitous behavior in the past should be rewarded by increasing our already enormous tax bills? How could they judge that our students can get by with even less education than they are currently getting by cutting seven days more from the school year, and that for the relatively low priority expenses of police on campus and small class size?

I would like to take a closer look at the need and cost for adult education classes. Is it common to have a district taking on both k-12 and adult education?

I, too, am outraged by the wasted $60,000.00. I believe this amount would have kept the Hercules elementary school music teacher employed here.

I would be less outraged if they didn't commission such a study once or twice every year and then use lies to scare people ("We will have no choice but to close all of the things that parents care most about") and sneaky tactics (like putting it on the ballot only when there is very low turnout expected in order to try to get those who most benefit out in the highest possible proportion) to try to push another tax through that the people clearly are against.

Giorgio, I believe you are correct about the music teacher. Call each and every board member and let them know.
Jeffrey, I believe police and smaller class sizes are a priority over the 7 days. Other districts have raised classes to 33 and cut many days off the year. Some schools in Oregon are doing 4 day school weeks.

I teach at a university that has a good reputation, and I can attest that California high schools are failing to prepare many students well for college. (I hate to think about the acumen of those I don't see!) I would be enthusiastic about a longer school day and a longer school year. In the case of my own education, I seldom had fewer than 35 students in a class, and that seemed normal and fine to me. I never once saw a police officer in my high school of about 1500 students, but perhaps there is a greater need for that here and/or now. Personally, I would favor larger class sizes, which would require fewer (therefore, presumably better) teachers, saving money that could be put into the classrooms in other ways.

Regarding police on campuses, some campuses in the district are unsafe, but I am not sure if campus police are the answer. What I observed during my brief teaching career was a campus that did not strictly enforce policies regarding negative conduct-behavior. Read the SARC which lists number of students suspended-expelled, then ask "how many SHOULD have been suspended or expelled?"

This resulted in a slippery slope and before you knew it, someone was seriously hurt. In some respects, the school campus was no different than the surrounding streets.

When a student died on campus after being shot, it was pointed out that the shooting occurred in front of the school, not on the campus, that the child ran onto the campus for help. Tragically, the paramedics could have responded to the scene sooner if they did not have to wait for the police to secure the area.

One of the teachers who assisted the child told me it would have been faster to have driven him to the hospital. I believe we had district police at that time, but it is possible their numbers had been reduced.

The administration needs parents to back such a zero tolerance policy because other parents will complain when it is their child is suspended or expelled. Such strict policies will benefit the offenders, too. We owe them a school environment where it will always be clear what is right and what is wrong.

From my perspective, I have been very impressed with the ECPD folk attached to ECHS. They seem to genuinely care about the kids, keep "flare ups" from occurring and provide a postive police presence rather that just coming in with "swords drawn" when an incident occurs.

I'd been interested to know if my observations correlate with those of Irene R-C as she was on campus last year whereas I just observed from afar.

Looks like my comments aren't showing up. I'll try again:

I only had good impressions of the ECPD officers! They definitely had positive relationships with the students and seemed to keep things under control. I didn't have a ton of contact with them, but I don't think I ever heard people badmouthing them. The ECPD officers were always patient and professional and we had mutual respect, while with the site supervisors, the opposite was true.

Thanks, Irene! That's kind of what I thought.

Our police officers contribute greatly to a safe school culture, yet we need to consider the following. At $160K, they do become the highest paid professionals by far in our schools. Given the times, is this the best use of school district money. Do we have a less costly option to achieve the same results? Does anyone know why San Pablo covers the costs for SRO's, while no other city does?

I don't really see why school grounds are not part of a normal patrol and response area, just like everywhere else in town. Providing their services seems more like a police function than a school function to me.

I have no animosity toward the police. They have an important, tough, and dangerous job, as do firemen and members of the military and some other vocations. But I do not think that any of these areas should be immune from review and criticism just because of that, and I don't think that detracts from the respect we have for them otherwise.

@Todd - really? Each police officer gets paid $160K per year? o_o How is that possible? That's like 4 teacher salaries, or more...

Years ago WCCUSD had its own trained police force. At that time I served as a member of the Safety Task Force. Our job was to analyze the services, costs, etc. Even though we determined our own officers should be retained because of their knowledge of the schools and the invaluable work they did with students and families, the Board at the time felt it was more cost effective to let them all go and replace them with SROs instead. These are not trained police officers but are security employees. The Board then contracted with each City to have coverage via each City's regular police department.

@Susan- wow. Maybe at this point our own police officers would be more cost-effective?? In an ideal world, I would much rather have only trained police officers patrolling the school instead of SROs. But SROs *are* in charge of things like supervising WASes (Work Alternative to Suspension = picking up trash, if you don't serve it you get suspended). The question I'm wondering about is, how much do we need SROs compared to police officers?

Irene,I'm retired now so I can't speak to SRO effectiveness today.One of the concerns was the cost of equipment, keeping evidence in a secure location and ongoing officer training. Th e concern then as now is the importance of safety at all school sites, especially secondary sites. Most districts use SRO's today.

I just watched a recording of this meeting and want to say I was very impressed with Mr. Thurmond's line of questioning regarding the Manzanita charter school compliance issue.

Mr. Ramsey commented that this questioning was not relevant to moving forward and was best left to private discussion. For the sake of transparency, I would prefer that such questions be raised at these publicized board meetings.

The question was very relevant to the corrective action process as we all need to ask where is the oversight in our district? Does the district perform audits of all schools, and if so, why was this item missed?

As a taxpayer and former district teacher and parent of future WCCUSD student, I ask for more of this kind of questioning at our meetings. Mr. Thurmond was asking the very questions that I wanted to ask.

Thank you, Mr. Thurmond!

Is there a district safety officer? I am aware of the safety subcommittee consisting of elected board members, but has anyone on the district payroll been delegated the responsibility for safety, including the conducting of safety inspections-audits? Who is the full-time, district safety expert?