Trustees take original 14-campus ‘hit list’ off table

Cabrillo Elementary School was removed from the chopping block Tuesday when The San Diego Unified School District scrapped its original plan to close 14 schools across the district to address its budget crisis. In the new proposal presented Tuesday, Barnard Elementary School would be closed and the Mandarin Chinese language-immersion magnet program would be moved out of Point Loma. All other schools in the Point Loma cluster would remain open and operating at their current grade configurations. A final decision on the plan is expected at the Dec. 27 board meeting. To generate an estimated $21 million in revenue, the board also gave staff the go-ahead to explore the sale of the undeveloped portion of the Barnard school site; the Mission Beach administrative site, located on the beach near Belmont Park; and Bay Terraces 11, an empty lot in the Morse Cluster in Southeast San Diego. Trustee Scott Barnett — who represents the beach-area schools — was the dissenting voice in a 4-1 vote and said he opposed the sale of land because it is “imprudent and gives more ammunition to those who think San Diego Unified is a mismanaged district to downgrade its rating.” Over the last week, both Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s downgraded San Diego Unified’s credit rating, citing the district’s inability to cut spending to match revenue declines. “Selling 100-year-old assets for one-time revenues to fund ongoing expenditures is foolhardy,” Barnett said. “I would rather keep properties and retain ownership and get ongoing revenues for years ahead.” The district is facing a $60 million to $100 million revenue shortfall in next year’s budget, which Superintendent Bill Kowba said could push city schools into bankruptcy and state receivership. “The real gorilla is the financial markets, and the ability to borrow money is based on credit rating.” Kowba said. “Financial markets don’t care about the quality of education.” Ron Little, the district’s chief financial officer, announced the downgrade from Standard & Poor’s on Tuesday during the board’s nearly six-hour-long meeting. The downgrades would increase the cost of long-term borrowing for the district’s general obligation bonds. After Little’s announcement, the board voted 4-1 — with John Lee Evans dissenting — to hire a consulting firm for $30,000 to examine the possibility of putting a new construction bond on the November 2012 ballot. The district first announced its school closure plan in Point Loma on Oct. 3. The original plan would have saved $5 million annually across the district and would have had impacted every school in the cluster except Point Loma High School. Under the original plan, Cabrillo and Barnard elementary schools would have been closed. In addition, the unique 5-6 configuration at Dana Middle School would have been eliminated. The K-6 Mandarin Chinese language-immersion magnet program at Barnard would also have moved to Dana. All elementary schools would also have changed from K-4 to K-5 and Correia Junior High School would have changed from a 7-8 grade structure to a 6-8 structure. On Oct. 24, a standing-room-only crowd of parents and students wearing red shirts packed Jackson Auditorium at Dana to decry the district’s original plan. Days after that meeting, Barnett called for a halt to school closures because he said the district’s coastal schools would unfairly take the brunt of the closures while unnecessary expenses were being made elsewhere. He pointed to a school board vote just days before that rejected cuts to transportation, which he said would have saved the district $9 million. “It needs to be a shared burden across the district,” Barnett said. “I will not sacrifice a half-dozen schools in my coastal area when my colleagues will clearly not make the tough decisions in the rest of the district.” On Oct. 31, Barnett presented his alternative plan to save the district from insolvency. In it, he supports keeping all schools open except the “decrepit” Barnard Elementary School. He also supports merging Mission Bay High School with Pacific Beach Middle School to create a place for the Mandarin Chinese language program to grow into an academy. The key elements of Barnett’s plan include: • a 10 percent salary cut for teachers to save $60 million a year; • a change in health care that would have employees bear the costs of health plans other than Kaiser to save $12 million a year; • delaying raises for teachers to save $21 million a year ; and • holding another election in November 2012 to pass a $50 parcel tax to raise $60 million a year, which he said would restore the salary cut. In 2010, voters rejected Proposition J, which would have levied a parcel tax. The proposition needed two-thirds voter approval to pass and received just over 50 percent. The district’s new school closure plan also recommends — pending approval of a new bond — the construction of a high school to serve southwest San Diego.