During the June 10th HUSD Board of Trustees meeting, Superintendent Chen Wu-Fernandez presented a balanced budget for the embattled school district. Despite the failure of a proposed Parcel Tax during the June Primary Election, the May Revised State Budget provided much-needed financial relief. With more than $24,000,000 in additional funding, the District should end the coming fiscal year around $7,000,000 under budget.

While this is good news, with declining enrollment and a rapidly-increasing cost to Special Education services, HUSD's budget woes are expected to come back within a few years. The District's unrestricted funds are expected to dwindle to the State-mandated 3% by 2029.

Saved By The May Revise

While HUSD's Measure G fell short of the 67% approval needed to pass, a generous May Revise from Governor Gavin Newsom has been a windfall for the District. As we covered a few weeks ago, the May Revise includes over $10,000,000 in ongoing funding and an additional $14,000,000 in one-time funding. Despite not being fully finalized by the State Legislature, Superintendent Chen Wu-Fernandez said that the additional funds from the May Revise were included in next year's budget projections.

The largest bucket of funding, $14,000,000 worth, is one-time funding which will be used to purchase textbooks and Chromebooks, the latter of which the Superintendent described as "an essential part of our instruction." The textbooks to be replaced would include science books which, according to the Superintendent, are 13 years out of date.

$1,700,000 would come from the Community Schools Grant, which includes 18 sites throughout the District. Unfortunately, the Superintendent revealed that Stonebrae no longer qualifies as a Community School as of this coming year. She did not say why.

Of the remaining funding, much will go to specific programs like Special Education and Paid Pregnancy Disability Leave. However $2,200,000 in ongoing funds and $3,000,000 in one-time funds have yet to be allocated.

Making No Promises

During public comment, the majority of speakers urged the District to reinstate Community School Specialists (CoSSs) and Family Engagement Specialists (FESs). Multiple speakers specifically cited Southgate Elementary, which recently became a Community School, and urged the Board to reinstate the cut positions.

When Trustee Austin Bruckner-Carrillo asked about the remaining unallocated funding and whether it could be used to address these concerns, Superintendent Wu-Fernandez pointed out that much of the funding is tied to specific programs. She also worried that the extra money for Special Education wouldn't be enough to cover costs at the current rate of increase. But she said that the money will be allocated by the Board in due time.

When asked by Trustee April Eljeiroudi if reinstating positions would be possible, Superintendent Chen Wu-Fernandez refused to make promises. She said that the budget was delicate and that any unbudgeted positions would have to wait until after the books close in June and after actuals become more readily available in July and August. "If we are bringing back people to sites," Trustee Eljeiroudi said, "that's already in the start of the school year." Superintendent Wu-Fernandez said that August was "most realistic."

Projecting The Future From An Old Plan

During the presentation of the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP), district staff highlighted the progress that had been made districtwide in the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) tests. But Trustees were frustrated that the progress was so slow, with single-digit percentage point increases, at best.

At the same time, district staff pointed out that HUSD was using a Strategic Plan that was developed in 2019, before the COVID-19 Pandemic that transformed education across the country. Although Superintendent Chen Wu-Fernandez explained that developing a new strategic plan was a large undertaking, she indicated that it could be done while the district also developed the next LCAP. She was unclear how that would be possible, considering the LCAP is based on the Strategic Plan.

Plans On Plans For Your Taxpayer Money

The Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is a state-mandated plan that every school district must develop to explain how taxpayer money is used. According to the presentation, "it identifies [district] goals, the actions we will take, and how funding will be used to meet the needs of students while addressing state and local priorities."

But this isn't just the standard funding that every district gets based on attendance. The district gets additional funding for students in three categories: Foster Youth, English Learners, and Socially Economically Disadvantaged. HUSD gets an additional $63,000,000 per year for the 17,112 students in the district that fit within one of these categories. Unfortunately, many students fit more than one category, but the state will only give money for each student once. For example, a student who is an economically disadvantaged English learner does not receive additional funding for being in two categories.

To help these students, the District needs a plan for what to do with that extra funding. There are several State Priorities that need to be addressed with the funding, including Conditions of Learning, Pupil Outcomes, and Engagement. The LCAP basically outlines how the district is going to improve those categories for the most at-risk students.

The district gathered input from educational partners, including parents, staff, and students, to see what their top themes were. Academic achievement continues to be the highest priority among all groups, as well as having a safe, supportive, and inclusive school. Student interventions, maintaining highly qualified staff, strong family engagement, expanding access to enrichment courses like VAPA and athletics, and clean facilities were also highlighted.

Slow Going On CAASPP

When presenting on the CAASPP data, only marginal improvements appear to have been made across all categories. English Language Arts proficiency scores increased around 2 percentage points to 33%, while Math scores increased only around 1% to 20.47%. The suspension rate decreased very slightly, 0.4 points, while Chronic Absenteeism only dropped 2.2 points to 26%. Meanwhile Average Daily Attendance remained about flat at 92.2%.

One point of concern highlighted by district staff was the continued use of an outdated Strategic Plan document. Originally drafted in 2019, the Strategic Plan was set to expire in 2022 and was created before the COVID-19 pandemic changed education for the foreseeable future. Since the LCAP has a three-year cycle, staff seemed unsure of how the next LCAP would be developed. "Will LCAP be written on the current strategic plan or will a new strategic plan be developed?" asked Director of Supplemental and Concentration Sandra Escobedo.

Trustee Ken Rawdon supported a new strategic plan, especially one that makes allowances for unexpected events like the pandemic. "Something that helps us weather it," he said, "so we don't have to retreat from it along the way." Superintendent Wu-Fernandez supported revamping the strategic plan and seemed to say it could be developed along with the next LCAP in the coming school year. However, she did not provide any details despite saying that developing a strategic plan is a complicated task.

Why So Slow?

Trustee April Eljeiroudi expressed concern about the rate of progress on student achievement. "This is very slow progress," she said. "1% difference, 2% difference. What do we need to do? This is just disheartening to say the least."

Superintendent Chen Wu-Fernandez reassured the Board that not only does change come slowly, the CAASPP is just a snapshot in time. The District hopes to have more regular, real-time data in the future to try to help make more impactful changes. "Even if it is incremental growth," she said, "we are definitely growing in the right direction."

Trustee Austin Bruckner-Carrillo was concerned about how projections in the LCAP for certain groups would take them in the wrong direction. For example, he said that the LCAP projects Foster Youth outcomes in some areas to be worse than the actual outcomes were this past year. Ms. Escobedo pointed out that the projections were developed in 2023 and that, in those cases, the students were merely progressing faster than anticipated. They did not make new projections until the next LCAP.

Trustee Sara Prada asked about the progress on suspensions and whether the data included so-called "in-house suspensions," where students are removed from their classroom for an hour or more. Superintendent Wu-Fernandez said that in-house suspensions were not tracked in that data, but that the district does track it internally. The Superintendent said she would share that data with Trustees.