LOWER LAKE — The Konocti Unified School District Board of Trustees conducted a workshop Wednesday night to establish new goals for the district and to go over the draft of next fiscal year”s budget.
Superintendent Bill MacDougall led the discussion on district goals. MacDougall said student achievement should be the primary goal, with staff performance as a second goal.
Keeping the district fiscally stable, providing staff with fair, equitable compensation and maintaining the outsides of district schools rounded out the list.
MacDougall said there should be some “sub-goals” as well. Establishing a professional learning community, where teachers discuss and share successful classroom techniques and assist each other, was one “sub-goal” for staff performance.
Another “sub-goal” for staff performance was teachers using strategic schooling techniques to engage students in their learning.
MacDougall said he wanted to keep the goal list short. He said additional district priorities will continue to be working closely with the high school, the district”s largest school, as well as the new Highland Academy, which will become a special needs school for some 45 students.
There was no vote taken on the goals by the board.
Director of Business Laurie Desimone led the discussion on the district”s next fiscal year budget. Desimone said the budget presented was only a draft because the district is still waiting on some finishing touches, such as the state budget and tax extensions for education.
Desimone said the district would plan on enrolling nearly the same amount of kindergarteners in the next school year as the last one. She said this would keep the district”s average daily attendance, where school districts make most of their money, about the same.
April Leiferman, principal of Pomo Elementary, said the district needs to have a contingency plan if the number of enrolled Kindergarteners is greater than anticipated.
Board member Hank Montgomery asked Desimone if the district was moving away from deficit spending. She said the budget draft has about $400,000 in deficit spending. She said the district needs to work on moving away from deficit spending.
Desimone said the district is utilizing nearly $2.1 million in Tier III funding grants. These are block grants from the federal government for educational purposes.
Desimone said the district reduced expenditures by 13 percent, with an overall budget of $25 million for next fiscal year.
Desimone asked the board to approve the draft so she could return with a final budget in July. The board unanimously approved the budget draft.
In other matters, an agreement was reached between the California School Employees Association (CSEA), Konocti Chapter 12 and the district through the 2012-2013 school year. The settlement had been delayed for multiple meetings. The board unanimously accepted the agreement.
The board unanimously approved of a new job description for school site secretaries. All secretaries in the district may be united under one job description, but the Konocti CSEA wanted to hold a meeting to discuss a seniority list for the secretaries before the school board approved combining all secretaries into site secretaries.
The board unanimously approved moving the district”s transportation department to a facility on the corner of Highway 53 and Old Highway 53 in Clearlake. Dana Moore, director of maintenance and operations, drew a diagram and described how the layout of the facility would look to the board.
Moore said there were some things to take care of, such as extending a building for mechanics to work on buses, but they would be finished over the summer.
Board member Bill Diener was absent because of personal reasons. The board will next meet on July 6 at 6:15 p.m.
Kevin N. Hume can be reached at kevin.n.hume@gmail.com or call directly 263-5636 ext. 14.
