Responses to Questions from Piedmont Community Association

By Jon F. Elliott

This repeats questions asked by PCA, and my replies.

"In the Citizens Advisory Committee on Parcel Tax Measures B & E, we spent a lot of time looking at comparable districts and their funding. It turns out that similar-seeming areas, such as Moraga, have very different tax bases. Piedmont has very few commercial properties, and a large number of houses with property values held far below market levels by Prop 13. Some other high-performing districts include low-income areas that attract higher levels of state and federal funding. Piedmont's high parcel taxes and high voluntary contributions bring our spending per pupil to levels comparable to other high-performing Districts, so it's most fair to say there are disparities in how different districts achieve rough parity in spending.

However, because our parcel taxes are already high, I believe the possible size of future rises should be evaluated closely when designing the next parcel tax measure for the 2013 ballot. For example, Citizens Advisory Committee member and Piedmont retiree advocate George Childs favors a freeze, but acknowledges that residents may find 2% annual rises (the same as Prop 13) more defensible than the 5% annual increases in recent years. Piedmont schools desperately need the parcel tax, and we can't alienate voters in the nearly 2/3 of households who have no students in our schools.

I also believe we should investigate income-based exemptions (partial or complete), as a way to prevent hardships. I don't start out favoring an aged-based exemption that doesn't consider incomes, but look forward to learning more as part of a broader discussion."

2. How would you personally demonstrate leadership and initiative in addressing fiscal/budget issues if you are elected to the School Board, especially during the next 12 months?

"I would continue approaches similar to those I applied as chair of the District Parcel Tax Committee, and have advocated at other District councils and the School Board. These include:

• provide wide and early notice that particular issues are to be discussed, providing the public with meaningful opportunities to express their opinions and preferences, particularly if programs for students and/or staff compensation and benefits might be cut
• collect and synthesize information from all possible sources, sufficient to weigh tradeoffs effectively (this will include calls to District staff to produce more data, and offer more alternatives, than they typically have done to date)
• provide balanced solutions, and explain them thoroughly to the community

3. How do you see the city and school district working together to solve problems during the next 4 years. Please provide specific examples.

"I've watched these agencies work together for a number of years, usually very effectively. Each has different tasks and primary responsibilities, and different laws govern. When they overlap, they work together best when the professionals and elected volunteers start from the position that they all serve a single community, then apply their distinct perspectives and resources to work out how best to do so. They are less effective when they start from the narrower perspective as the City or the District. For example, attempts to address long-term funding for replacement of artificial turf fields initially were stymied by inter-agency bickering, but eventually moved forward to a reasonable community-wide basis for funding. Similar ups-and-downs have complicated efforts by the District and the City's Recreation Department to share one another's youth sports facilities.

Issues about shared use and funding will continue in the coming years. These will include ongoing negotiations about P.E. and team use of the City-owned Piedmont pool now that it is under direct City management, while also balancing priorities with lap-swimmers, private swim-teams, and recreational family use. There are no `right' answers, but we need workable allocations of scarce resources among parts of the community and reasonable funding plans for operating, maintenance, and replacement costs.

As a School Board member, I would add a steady and calming voice to dealings between the agencies, and a fair and rigorous mind to decisions about allocation and funding. I am committed to full, open, and public discussion of these matters."

4. Open Enrollment: The Romero Bill has recently been enacted allowing out-of-district students to transfer to the Piedmont school district from low-performing schools. Acceptance is automatic if capacity is available. What criteria and prioritization for enrollment in the Piedmont Unified School District should be given to the following groups: children of District employees, children of City employees, grandchildren of residents, students from under-performing schools.

"I've been pushing for a broad public discussion of these issues for the past two years with very limited response from the District and current Board, so I can say there's not yet any obvious answer.

The fundamental question is: how many interdistrict transfers best serve education in Piedmont's schools, and why? We should never force the schools to exceed their "capacity," but information presented by District administrators has tended to confuse what that means. One measure is student-teacher ratios to target how many children are in each classroom; I wouldn't want to raise those ratios unless we had to. A different measure is the physical capacity of the facilities, including whether there are available classrooms we could fill with additional students. PHS once had 150 more students than now and PMS had 100 more, but District administrators recall that those high-water enrollments were too crowded. They acknowledge there may be room for some additional students, but still haven't analyzed how many would be too many.

Nearly 200 of the District's 2500 students presently live outside Piedmont. Most of these are children of District and City employees, and all but a few of the rest attend Millenium High. Can the District benefit from more transfers, or is this already too many? I strongly suspect that larger enrollments would enrich opportunities for all students by adding new courses or more sections in existing courses, something I've struggled with as a parent advocate at PMS and PHS.

Your question identifies different groups of non-resident students. The District's existing system provides nearly 150 spaces to District and City employees, and generally excludes the other groups. The Romero Bill requires at least some access to students from failing schools, although nobody knows how many might apply -- there's been only one application in the last two years. I also believe we should look for opportunities to admit some grandchildren of Piedmont residents, since we count on these grandparents to support our schools by voting for and paying parcel taxes. I believe it would strengthen our community to give these grandparents a direct and ongoing connection with our schools.

I'll continue to push for serious consideration of these questions, including whether we can identify a reasonable target for interdistrict transfers, and then set priorities and/or establish a lottery system to meet that target."

5. Employee compensation: Approximately 130 children of School District employees attend Piedmont Schools. How is the privilege of enrolling employee children factored into the compensation packages of employees?

"At present, there is no consideration of the value of this benefit in the employee unions' contracts, or anywhere else in public discussions of District policies. Obviously, it's harder to attach a dollar value to the benefit than it is for medical or pension benefits, but it's clearly important for those employees whose children join their parents in our school community. Frankly, I suspect it's also beneficial to all Piedmont students, to the extent that it provides a broader student population. However, I think it must be evaluated within the broader public discussion of interdistrict transfers. I've raised this issue repeatedly in recent three years as part of broader employee contract and student interdistrict transfer questions (see my answer to #4 above), seeking to start a public conversation. I don't start from a pre-set opinion on this, and would not suggest precipitous changes that would be hugely disruptive of the lives of these students and their families. But it is important to get and evaluate good data on all employee benefits, and to look at this one in the broader context of the District's response to the Romero Bill."

6. What are the most significant issues facing PUSD over the next 2 to 5 years?

"The most obvious significant issue is fiscal. With no immediate prospect that state funding will return to pre-recession levels, or even stabilize at a level we can plan around, the District must maintain adequate reserves and program flexibility to respond to unpredictable and uncontrollable swings in state revenues. BUT the District also has not just the need but the responsibility to set a level and structure for local parcel taxes that are fair and sustainable for Piedmont residents. See my answer to #1 above for more detail. The District must continue to engage parents so that dedicated volunteers can continue to convince growing proportions of parents to contribute growing sums. The community needs to have a clearer, more straightforward ongoing picture of the value and cost of excellent public education in our schools.

Second, the District must continue to reinforce and apply its recent focus on "Continuous Improvement" by seeking ongoing opportunities to improve its excellent programs. These include adjusting the curriculum and individual teachers' practices to incorporate new techniques and tools. The dedicated core of teachers and staff working hard to raise the bar on innovative, effective practice deserve strong support. I want to see further improvements to transparency and predictability of administrative processes. There should be clear written job descriptions for all administrators, for example. Parents need to be able to trust that concerns or issues they raise involving their children get substantive consideration, with specific plans to address them. Most generally, we must always (not just sometimes) be willing to ask tough questions, dig out reliable data or recognize when none exist and a decision must be made based on our collective best judgment, and then seek outcomes that best fit the Piedmont community's evolving educational values and expectations.

Both of these significant issues highlight the need for the third, which might seem more mundane but can have an enormous day-to-day impact: the need to enhance public information and participation. Community support grows and becomes richer when the District provides better and more usable information to the community, and solicits public input and involvement earlier, more productively and more consistently. Enhancements include making meeting agendas and the back-up documents clearer and more widely available, with plain-language summaries of matters under consideration and critical or controversial matters differentiated from routine business. We should continue to strengthen and expand ongoing venues for parent participation, such as school site councils, district curriculum and GATE reviews, and Board workshops on special topics. Beside the substantive actions and recommendations that come out of these venues, they provide important opportunities for parents and taxpayers to work alongside teachers and other District staff, to develop more collaborative relationships and approaches to problem solving, and to gain a broader understanding of our respective roles in our children's education."