Dave Geck, Lake County Superintendent, wrote a great piece published on March 5 edition of the Record-Bee about the state of financial crisis that the governor has proposed for California”s Education System and how that will trickle down to the Lake County Schools.
I would like to get even more specific if I may and speak to the direct effects of the state budget, declining enrollment, and a bad census on Kelseyville schools. We have a governor in California who clearly places education as a low level priority in his administration and expects schools to meet the mandates of the California High School Exit Exams, STAR Testing as well as the Federal No Child Left Behind mandates without the funds to do so.
In addition to state and federal issues, Kelseyville has fell victim to declining enrollment as people leave the state in search of a place where they can make ends meet with their paychecks. The school district was also financially penalized by a faulty census taken a couple of years back and chose not to pay $50,000 to have the census redone. If you take all of these factors and add on the double digit annual rise in cost for health insurance for employees for the last 10 years, it is little wonder we have reached the dire straights in which we currently find ourselves.
One administrator, one counselor and 13 teachers have already been given their layoff notices and now within the next week or so more than 40 support staff positions will be getting “pink slipped” as well. As you can imagine the schools cannot possibly keep up the same level of services to our students and the public with this many losses in personnel. As things stand right now, the fall may bring very full classrooms with limited class choices as well as a decline in the instructional services to classrooms, clerical assistance, special education services, custodial and supervision.
The people being given layoff notices are all part of our community and the losses will be deeply felt by the students, the parents and the staff. It is my hope that the community will be motivated to action on behalf of the school system and the education of their children and work to keep the personnel at the schools at capacity in order to keep up our level of services. Although it sounds like a daunting task, we are still living in a democracy and inundating the legislator”s offices with community letters do make a difference. Please take a few moments to be part of our education solution in Kelseyville, Lake County and the State of California.
Holley Luia
Kelseyville
