Category: Financial (Page 5 of 6)

Who was Glass’s Arts Academy for: Kids or his Reputation?

November 26, 2017 / ijsadmin

Why did Jason Glass just try to shove an arts school down our throats, out of the blue? Was it because Jefferson County needs an arts school? No! It was because DeliverEd said Jason Glass needed a “quick win” to demonstrate that the District could implement his vision.

The reality is, the arts school was a poorly conceived idea that clearly demonstrated Glass’s lack of experience, the hypocrisy of his “listening” and “communication,” and his complete disregard for the financial implications and reality of starting an arts school. The uproar it provoked is evidence that Glass hadn’t bothered to even find out if there’s a need.

My oldest child graduated from Denver School of the Arts (DSA), so I understand the basic concept of an arts school. After what I heard at the School Board meeting on Nov. 14, it’s clear I have more of an understanding of what it takes to create an Arts school than do Glass and District staff.

There were so many things wrong with this proposal that I don’t even know where to start.

I guess I’ll start with what people describe as Glass’s strength – communication. Did he even discuss the concept of an arts academy with anyone? I’ve heard there was a meeting on October 26^th (a night when he probably knew people would be distracted by a BOE candidate forum). No one I know knew anything about this meeting in advance, or has heard anything about what happened.

Based on the surprised reaction to the subsequent “grapevine” news that an arts academy would be discussed at the upcoming Board meeting, I’d say that Glass certainly didn’t live up to his reputation as a communicator. Teachers were caught completely by surprise and universally opposed the idea, even Glass’s usual parent supporters and Support Jeffco Kids. Glass wants people to believe he listens and communicates, but actions speak louder than words. He listens to and interacts with people who support him, but when HE wants to do something, does he really listen and want input? Not in this case.

Let me address some of the financial aspects of the proposed Arts School:

Renovation Cost. District staff estimate that it will cost around $500K to make the vacant Sobesky building usable for an Arts school, including new doors, a dance floor, a new roof and a raised ceiling. I think anyone who knows Sobesky was shocked at hearing this, since we were told the reason special education services was moved out of the building several years ago was that it was uninhabitable. And then the complete shocker was that the building’s FCI was 28 — better than the 31 FCI at Wheat Ridge. More troubling, though, is that less than 8 months after what the Board described as a “budget crisis,” where is $500k coming from to upgrade? Or did the budget crisis miraculously go away when Jason Glass needed to make himself look effective?
Operating Cost. The District just closed aging Pleasant View Elementary to save $600k yearly in operating costs. Won’t the annual operating costs of Sobesky, another old building, be similar? Where is this additional $600k magically going to come from? What will have to be cut to pay for these costs? Or, if Glass did miraculously find this money, what better uses could it go to? Many teachers have suggested it be channeled into supporting arts programs at neighborhood schools. But the District response would probably be that that has to be done with SBB.
Speaking of SBB, were the SBB implications of the Arts school clearly considered? It seemed clear from the Board discussion that the Arts Academy was an attempt to prevent Denver from getting state funding for the 90 Jeffco students who go to DSA. Is the District so naive as to think that just because Jeffco starts an arts academy, kids won’t continue to go to DSA? Let’s be serious. Kids, and parents, know quality programs. DSA has a sterling reputation and is one of the top-ranked high schools in the state. It also has programs that Glass didn’t include in his proposal, such as creative writing and music.

The fact of the matter is that while a Jeffco Arts Academy may retain some kids, DSA will still get Jeffco kids, especially in the start-up years – so the true losers will be other neighborhood Jeffco schools. And the loss will be more significant than the misleading 1-2 students per school that a Cabinet member told the Board. Maybe the Cabinet is making the assumption that NO Jeffco kids will go to DSA. But it doesn’t take a math genius to work that out. Even in the first year of the Academy, schools will lose more than the 1-2 students projected. Considering that middle schools would lose 150 kids (grades 6-8) to the Academy and there are 20 middle schools, that works out to 6.5 kids, on average, per middle school. It is reasonable to expect that schools closer to the Academy would lose more while schools farther away would lose fewer. The numbers are even more pronounced for high schools, once the Academy is operating as a 6-12 school. In this case, the Arts Academy would draw 200 students from 17 high schools, an average of 12 per school, but once again more pronounced at closer schools. Wheat Ridge, Lakewood, Jefferson, Golden and Alameda could expect the loss of 15-20 students each. That’s the equivalent of $100,000 SBB dollars, or more than one teacher, per school. Were these consequences fully thought out?

And what about staffing? If my memory serves me correctly, DSA holds auditions in November or early December. If the Arts School is approved by the Board for an August 2018 opening, how would there be enough lead-up time to staff up, where would teachers be hired from, where would auditions be held, and who would hold them? Would the school’s teachers be hired away from our neighborhood schools, putting dents in the continuity of already existing Jeffco programs? And before starting a new school, wouldn’t teachers need time to develop the curriculum?

Finally, the budgeted eight teachers is not adequate to teach 200 students core subjects plus their specialty areas – unless you plan to have dance teachers teaching areas they’re not trained in such as math.

Once again, Glass’ concept may look good from a high level, but once you dive into the details, it is poorly conceived.

The Board was right to put the brakes on something that was moving way too fast, based on a 3-year-old survey that found that one of the things people were looking for in the District was an arts school.

It’s funny. The day before the Board meeting, DeliverEd recommended that the District find a “quick win” to help sell Glass’s “Vision.” Was the Arts Academy recommendation the “quick win” Glass was looking for?

This recommendation was certainly “quick,” but it was not going to be a win for anyone. Fortunately, the Board saved us, at least temporarily, from a potentially costly decision that would have affected the District’s finances, neighborhood schools and kids who opted to attend such a dubious “start-up.” This recommendation seems to have been aimed more at advancing of Glass’s stature than serving the District or our kids.

Board treats many central Jeffco taxpayers & students like 2nd class citizens

October 31, 2017 / ijsadmin

While schools in central Jeffco continue to deteriorate, the Board prioritizes spending $32M (originally $67M in 3B) on moving 6^th graders to middle school and building schools for brand new Jeffco residents.

Is it fair to longtime residents of Jeffco who have paid taxes to support their neighborhood, and Jeffco, schools for years and years to have the Board tell them there is no money to maintain their schools? How is it that the Board can find at least $32M to controversially move 6^th graders to Middle School and spend millions more in building brand new schools for people who have just moved to Jeffco in new housing developments?

I don’t think that is fair or equitable.

Of the high schools, Wheat Ridge, built in 1956, has the District’s worst Facility Condition Index. Green Mountain and Arvada are not far behind. There are reports of black ooze at Alameda and asbestos at Jefferson. There are similar situations at the District’s Elementary and Middle schools in these older areas.

Haven’t the residents of these areas been paying taxies longer than anyone else? Why should they, and the students attending schools in these areas, be treated like 2^nd class citizens? Is it because some of these areas are some of the poorer areas in Jeffco?

I understand 3B didn’t pass, but if the Board can find money to build Three Creeks and additions to Sierra, Drake and Dunstan (with more coming) couldn’t they have chosen not to have made the K-5, 6-8 decision universal and to use some of that saved money to maintain the school buildings the District already has?

The school Board made a decision. They chose to implement a K-5, 6-8 plan that was optional, not supported by academic studies, questioned by the community and costly.

The school Board chose to ignore the needs of long time, lower income communities in favor of newer, more affluent Jeffco residents.

I think the school Board didn’t listen to the community and made poor choices. Unfortunately the children living in those ignored communities are the ones who will suffer.

Brad Rupert and Susan Harmon don’t tell the truth.

October 28, 2017 / ijsadmin

Surprisingly, Support Jeffco Kids (SJK) and I agree on one thing. We don’t like lies or liars. In a post published on October 15^th, SJK wrote:

It is never okay to lie to get elected. NEVER.

I agree, but I take that a step further in that I don’t think it is EVER okay to lie PERIOD.

Yet, isn’t that what both Brad Rupert and Susan Harmon did at the League of Women Voters Candidate forum on October 17^th in response to a question on the sources of their campaign funding?

I was there. Ron Mitchell was the first of the incumbents to answer and I will give him credit in that he took time to think about the question before answering. Brad Rupert was the next incumbent and he answered adamantly that the “vast majority” of funding came from within the District. Susan Harmon was the last of the incumbents and she used Brad’s exact phrase and replied “vast majority” came from within the District.

The problem is that those statements are just not true. Certainly we could argue the meaning of “vast”, but unfortunately for Brad using the phrase “vast majority” for 58% is intentionally deceptive and falls into Webster’s definition of lie for me. It is worse for Susan.

For Brad, $22,279, by my calculations from http://tracer.sos.colorado.gov/PublicSite/SearchPages/CandidateDetail.aspx?SeqID=37387, of $53,007 in total contributions, 42% was contributed to his campaign from outside the District. That is not a “vast majority” from inside the District, Brad. The largest contribution of $20,514 came from a Committee controlled by the state teacher’s union (CEA). Brad also received $4,010 from the Jefferson County Education Association (JCEA), or local teachers’ union for a total of $24,524 from the teacher unions.

For Susan, it is worse. A MAJORITY of her funding actually came from OUTSIDE of the District, $24,847 of $49,626, or 50+%. Susan’s largest contribution of $20,514 also came from a Committee controlled by CEA.

So, in front of a packed room of people, with complete conviction and without hesitation, both candidates didn’t tell the truth in a blatant attempt to deceive the audience in an attempt to get elected

I know what I think of those candidates. Truthfulness is one of my core values. I literally cannot stand people who intentionally deceive, don’t tell the truth and lie.

I wonder what Support Jeffco Kids thinks of their candidates who can’t tell the truth now?

To a lesser degree, it is disconcerting to me where Brad and Susan’s money is coming from. It is coming from the teachers’ unions. We saw what happened when the unions contributed nearly $275k to elect their “clean slate” in 2015. It resulted in nearly $40M in teacher compensation increases over the past 2 years.

If the incumbents win in 2017, will the unions be repaid again? The incumbents are already talking about teacher compensation increases and as we saw last week, they will lie to keep the voters from knowing where their contributions are coming from.

Why wasn’t the decision to close Pleasant View revisited after state funding was more than anticipated?

October 10, 2017 / ijsadmin

I don’t understand why the decision to close Pleasant View, and the other February budget cuts for that matter, were not re-examined after the final state funding was more than originally anticipated earlier this year.

According to District budget documents, the saving from closing Pleasant View was $663,000. Yet, the Board decided, without reviewing prior budget cut decisions, to allocate the additional state funding to:

$3.7M in Additional SBB Allocation for One-time use
$600,000 for Alternative Pathway Factor
$412,000 for IT Funding for School & Community Engagement
$669,000 for Support for High School Athletics & Activities

I’m not saying that any of these allocations were not needed or a good use of the funding (other than the $600k in Alternative Pathways funding).

But, shouldn’t there have been a discussion on revisting the cuts of February 9^th and a complete weighing of options?

There certainly should have been!

For example, is $412k for IT Funding for School & Community Engagement more important than saving Pleasant View?

To the Cabinet and Board it is!

Once again, the Board blindly went with the Cabinet’s recommendations and went forward with their plans to close a “community school”, similar to the Jefferson “community school” that Ron Mitchell likes to claim he and the Board supported.

What’s so different about Pleasant View and that community?

I don’t know, but it doesn’t look good to me.

Board didn’t ask single question on accountability when approving $600k in additional Alternative Pathways funding

October 6, 2017 / ijsadmin

Let me be clear, I think that Alternative Pathways funding is needed and is a great idea.

However, the allocation of that funding is inequitable and there is no District accountability for that funding.

In essence, the District doesn’t know if this money is being spent at the school level on Alternative Pathways or toilet paper. Don’t you think that if you are allocating $2M for a specific purpose during a Board described “budget crisis” there should be some accountability that the money is actually being spent as intended? I would hope so.

But let me talk about equity first. The Alternative Pathways funding is equal, not equitable. Every HS gets the same amount. Yet, aren’t our High Schools different sizes? Don’t our High Schools have different needs?

For example, does Conifer with fewer than 800 students, a 75% matriculation rate and 14% Free and Reduced Lunch rate have the same alternative pathways needs as Alameda with 1300 students, 41% matriculation rate and 84% Free and Reduced Lunch rate? I doubt it, but the Board’s “equalization” of this funding says they do.

For this reason alone this allocation is just poorly thought out.

And what about accountability? There is none!

In response to a CORA request I submitted the District responded:

The District has not requested or collected information on the pathways funding expenses. Schools allocate the budgets, there could be multiple lines and staff, and it is unknown.

There it is! No accountability. No budget line, no tracking, no accountability! No understanding if there even was a need for additional Alternative Pathways money at a school, or if the money previously allocated was used for its intended purposes.

And, to make this even worse, no Board member even asked a question on how schools spent the previously allocated $65k. They blindly, with complete disregard of taxpayer money, approved another $50k to each High School.

This is just one of the reasons the taxpayers in this county don’t trust the Board to be good stewards of our money and why we need change on the Board.

Does the Teacher Union “own” the School Board? Follow the Money!

October 3, 2017 / ijsadmin

During the last Board election in 2015 the National (NEA), State (CEA) and local (JCEA) teachers unions provided nearly $275,000 in support to get the current “clean slate” Board members elected.

National Education Association, $150,000
Colorado Education Association, $113,500
Jefferson County Education Association, $20,000

Was that money well spent?

First, the teachers were immediately rewarded with a new 5 year contract that included more than $20 million in one-time and ongoing raises in May of 2016.

But then, only one year after signing that new 5 year contract the Board fabricated a “budget crisis”, which included school closings and cuts to programs to generate an additional $19.5M in teacher compensation increases beginning in 2017-2018..

Even with all of that, Jeffco staff and Board members are already saying that the current salaries are not competitive for mid-career teachers.

I don’t see that when looking at the 2016-17 salary graphs here.

But, I guess that’s what you have to say to try to get people to support additional budget cuts or tax increases if you want to try and push through another big compensation increase for your employees and supporters!

Anyway, you can decide for yourself on the reasons for what’s transpiring.

But, as they say on the TV crime shows – “Follow the Money”.

Brad Rupert’s definition of “fiscal transparency” is not real fiscal transparency!

September 22, 2017 / ijsadmin

From his comments at the SJK Candidates’ Forum in Wheat Ridge last week, Brad Rupert wants us as taxpayers to believe that because of the size of the District, the District’s budget gets very complicated, very quickly. He was implying that either we wouldn’t understand the budget or the District doesn’t want to take the time to explain it to us.

With that comment, Brad also demonstrated his complete lack of understanding of budgets.

The fact of the matter is that school districts, no matter the size, have similar expenditures and line items. It is only the numbers in those line items that get bigger. Read the budget Brad. There is very little broken down by school and even in that case smaller districts would just have fewer schools. There’s nothing complicated about that. That’s just an excuse.

Brad also wants us to believe that the Financial Oversight Committee has responsibility for ensuring budget transparency. Really? Is this the same Financial Oversight Committee that approved a staff recommendation to use reserves to fund up to 1% of compensation increases this year if state funding was not what was anticipated? No organization funds on-going expenses with reserves unless it is a dire emergency. And Brad expects us to trust the Financial Oversight Committee? Sorry, I can no longer trust them.

But let’s talk about what real fiscal transparency looks like.

Before moving to Jefferson County we lived in New York state. Our school district was struggling financially, unlike the self-induced and mismanaged “fiscal crisis” our Board wanted everyone to believe we had this year.

In an effort to collaboratively look at the issue my NY District held 2 budget discussion/working sessions open to all members of the community. One session was held in the evening, the other on a Saturday to allow maximum attendance. Several members of the Board, the Superintendent, members of District finance and at least one member of all district departments attended each session. The District handed out line item copies of the District budget and then presented a high-level overview of the budget, why the district was struggling and financial alternatives.

Approximately 50 members of the community attended the same session I did, and this was from a district much smaller than Jeffco.

After that, community members could ask any question they wanted. It is my recollection that questions as mundane as reducing the frequency of landscaping during the summer were asked and answered.

The Board and District staff stayed until EVERY question was asked and answered.

That’s what real fiscal transparency is, Brad!

That’s what true collaboration with the community looks like.

It was a far cry from the “people can access the budget online” fiscal transparency that Brad Rupert wants us to believe is transparency. It was a Board that truly wanted to collaborate with the community instead of merely doing their “job” of boringly listening to 3 minute-constrained community members during public comment and then completely ignoring them.

Susan Harmon is just as bad. Her comment that she “think(s) that transparency is there” completely misses the point. It is even more disconcerting when she says that she “relies on the District’s presentations at the Board table”. Hey Susan, I want independent thinkers on the Board. I want someone that is at least mildly interested in the details. The District staff has repeatedly shown that they make poorly thought out recommendations and can’t be trusted (http://improvejeffcoschools.org/index.php/2017/02/14/jeffco-board-of-education-should-be-embarrased/ , http://improvejeffcoschools.org/index.php/2017/05/31/another-poorly-thought-out-recommendation-by-the-school-districts-staff/) . Board members need to do what they were elected to do and provide some true oversight.

And, you can add Ron Mitchell to the group of Board members who have no clue about fiscal transparency as he joined the crowd when he merely toted the thickness of the budget book he has.

Guess what incumbent Board members? Fiscal transparency is in the details, not in the “thickness” of the document.

You and the District staff aren’t providing real fiscal transparency, so stop claiming that you do!

Matt Van Gieson is right and Brad Rupert is wrong regarding Jeffco Budget transparency

September 19, 2017 / ijsadmin

Publishing a budget so that people can read it does not make the budget transparent.

For example, I doubt that anyone, other than someone in District finance, can answer the following budget related questions:

Under what budget line item are the salaries for the 2 HS GT Teachers that were targeted for elimination under the January recommendations?
What is the line item “Offset Budget Adjustment” under “Materials and Supplies” for Elementary, Middle and High Schools that mysteriously appeared in the budget this year?
Why was there a $6.7M Contingency budget for Elementary School Materials and Supplies in 2015-2016 when the entire Materials and Supplies budget was only $13M? Why was the Contingency line item raised to $13M in 2016-2017 when only $4M in total was spent on Materials and Supplies in 2015-2016?
Why couldn’t I get the 2015-2016 budget Actuals when I CORAed for that information in February 2017, 7 months after the close of the fiscal year?
Why did several 2016-2017 Adopted budget lines change from the 2016-2017 budget to the 2017-2018 budget?

I can’t answer questions 2, 3, 4 and 5, but the answer to question number 1 is that it is part of the Elementary School Contingency funds. Transparency would have that line item easily identifiable under the District’s GT budget. If you think that is transparent, then you must be blind. Note: I only know this because I had to file a CORA request to get that information.

There are just too many inconsistencies and unknowns to call the District’s budget “transparent”.

Let me talk about some of these issues and their lack of transparency to support Matt Van Gieson’s point and to contradict Brad Rupert’s blindly believing everything the District staff tells him.

“Offset Budget Adjustment” – This line item mysteriously appears on pages 85, 86 and 89 of the 2017-2018 Adopted Budget Web under Materials and Supplies for Elementary, Middle and Senior Level Detail. $4.4M, not an inconsequential amount. What is that? Is it being used to hide the enormity of the Contingency line item I will discuss below?
Materials and Supplies Contingency. This seems like a slush fund to me. $10M budgeted in 2015-2016, with none used as reported in the 2017-2018 Budget. After years of budgeting it is ridiculous that 41% of the schools’ 2017-18 Materials & Supplies budget is Contingency. 10% to 20% would be conservative with years of budgeting data. This appears to be a non-transparent slush fund if you ask me.

In late February 2017 I sent a CORA request to the District requesting 2015-2016 Budget actuals for the fiscal year that ended in June 2016. Amazingly, Budget actuals were not available, 7 months later. Is that budget transparency? I think not. I don’t even know how you can form the 2016-2017 budget without having a good idea of the previous year’s actuals & projections, but to be well into the 2017-2018 budget planning cycle and not have actuals from 2015-2016 is just unfathomable to me.

There were several 2016-2017 budget line items that changed from the 2016-2017 Adopted Budget to the 2017-2018 Adopted Budget. These changes weren’t just isolated to the Contingency line item as the Total line changed by an amount different than the Contingency change. Note the changes in the Contingency Budget and Total Budget items.

What happened here? Again, where is the transparency with this process? Since the 2016-2017 Budget was approved, I even question the legality of these changes and where they carried over to. But, whatever happened, it certainly wasn’t transparent.

And these were just the things I found in a high-level overview of the Approved Budgets. I think it would be safe to say that if I could find these things that there are probably more. And, there are probably people that Matt has talked to that have identified others.

In addition, I’ve previously written about the non-transparent budget maneuverings related to the Alternative Pathways Budgeting For Outcomes (BFO) allocation. (http://improvejeffcoschools.org/index.php/2017/06/14/transparency-in-jeffco-only-if-repeating-the-word-counts/)

Why is all of this important?

This is important for several reasons.

First, people, including Brad Rupert, are saying that the District’s budget is transparent. The fact is, as I have proven above, this is not true. Yes, there is a published document, but looking closely at that document shows that there are some things that require further investigation as Matt insinuated. The key point is that there is not a process in place that would allow people to ask questions similar to what I’m asking. That means non-transparency in my book.

Second, the large Contingency “slush” fund is most certainly not transparent. It shouldn’t be that large ($10M plus $4.4M in Offset Budget Adjustment). If this slush fund was looked at in January what could have been saved from the Board’s cuts? Certainly, the $660k savings from the closing of Pleasantview could have been easily absorbed by just the Elementary Contingency funds. Did the Board even really care?

What is most frustrating for me personally is that my daughter made a public comment on these exorbitant Contingency funds at the February 9^th Board meeting and I wrote a detailed letter to the Board regarding them. Yet Brad Rupert and his fellow Board members did not even discuss using more than just a minuscule amount of these non-transparent, and exorbitant, Contingency slush funds to pay for their desired compensation increases, resulting in budget cuts.

Don’t tell me the Budget is transparent when questions like I have above can’t be answered. Don’t tell me the Budget is transparent when it is more convenient to ignore constituents than take a minute to even investigate what $17M (in the 2016-2017 budget) in Contingency funds are actually being used for.

Matt is right and Brad is wrong with regard to Jeffco Budget transparency!

Should we believe Support Jeffco Kids or the Colorado Fiscal Transparency Website when it comes to Jeffco’s Budget?

September 13, 2017 / ijsadmin

A recent blog post by Support Jeffco Kids (SJK) was titled “Unless You Count $ Twice, There is no Billion Dollar Budget”.

This post even led with the sentence “We’ve all heard the fictional story about the billion dollar budget for Jeffco and yet again this year, people are posting about it”.

Unfortunately for Support Jeffco Kids, the only fictional story is the one they are (once again) telling.

I don’t know about you, but based on SJK’s track record of exaggeration and misleading posts, I’ll believe the Colorado Fiscal Transparency website anytime when it comes to school districts’ revenues and expenditures.

The Colorado Fiscal Transparency site shows total spending of $933M and total funding of $981M for Jeffco in 2015-2016. That looks close enough to $1B for me, particularly accounting for increases over 2 years.

SJK can talk about the General Fund all they want, but if they had any understanding of financial accounting at all, they would understand that the budget is $1B.

Nice try though!

SJK wants to end the “false rhetoric”?

“Regardless, let’s end the false billion dollar budget rhetoric. “

as they wrote in their post.

But aren’t they the ones who are spreading the false rhetoric?

Sorry, SJK, once again your posts can be filed under “Alternative Facts”, “false” and “misleading”.

Note: As before, I was inspired to write this post because of another post by SJK that included the statement:

“It IS important to correct untruths and spread FACTUAL information online.”

I hope they don’t mind that I’m following their advice to “correct untruths and spread FACTUAL information online”!

Update September 18, 2017 – I found this text on the District web site (http://www.jeffcopublicschools.org/cms/one.aspx?pageId=927430):

As you review this information, we feel it is important to remember that Jeffco is the largest school district in Colorado, with more than 14,000 full and part-time employees.

The district’s total appropriated budget for 2016-2017 is $1,008,008,698.

I guess we really do have a $1B budget!

Mere months after “budget crisis” and budget cuts, new Superintendent hires “Special Assistant”

August 25, 2017 / ijsadmin

What are we to think when only days into a new fiscal year and just days on the job, the new Superintendent commits the equivalent of a full-time teacher’s salary so that he can “supervise” a PhD Education Leadership resident?

Didn’t the District just have what the Board described as a “budget crisis”? Didn’t the District just absorb $10M+ in budget cuts? Didn’t the District just narrowly avoid closing 4 additional neighborhood schools and cuts to successful student-facing programs?

If the fiscal situation is so dire, where did the money for this “resident” miraculously appear?

I realize there is some “slush” in a $1B budget. But shouldn’t some of that “slush” have been found only a few short months earlier, before successful programs were recommended for reduction?

Why didn’t the District staff find that “extra” money then? Or is the new Superintendent such a financial wizard that he could identify it after only a few short days on the job? How did he find this money at the beginning of the fiscal year before under-spends could be identified?

I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that the optics of this immediate “hire” are not good. This “hire” makes me wonder the following:

Why does the new, highly paid Superintendent need a “Special Assistant”?
Where is this money really coming from? The response to the CORA request I filed stated it is coming from the (already reduced by $54,000 due to budget reductions) Superintendent’s Admin budget, or other unspecified accounts at management discretion. This means it is coming from some still unknown budget line.

Why should we ever trust the District/Board when they say there is a “budget crisis” if they can come up with the salary for one teacher equivalent just days into a new fiscal year? It makes me wonder where else they are “hiding” money.
What value is this “Special Assistant” really going to provide to the District, above and beyond staff that is already on the payroll and familiar with the District?
Why did the new Superintendent agree to this?

I’m sorry, but when the District keeps saying that they’re no longer going to fund successful and life-changing student-facing programs such as the District’s HS GT program, yet can miraculously and instantaneously find money for the Superintendent’s “Special Assistant”, I don’t think you can trust any future “budget crisis” or proposed budget cuts!