BUDGET ACCOUNTABLITY

By Cheryl Quinones

After years of ineapt poor accounting and reporting practices, no checks or balance procedures, the District's Adminstrative Staff in charge of the Budget are leading the School District to deficit spend.

The South Bay Union School District has a Proposition Y on the ballot; this proposition is just a piggy-back to Proposition X voters approved in 2008. This is total approximate revenue in excess of 59.4 MILLION DOLLARS to fix our schools. The South Bay Union School District cannot meet the bond note scheduled for June 2013 because of poor accounting of these funds and deficit spending as a result according to sources: Building Excellence in Education http://www.buildingpropx.com/performance-audit.html Proposition X assessments on property owners will run through 2036.

If Proposition Y passes property owners' tax obligation will increase as it did when Proposition X as approved by voters in 2008 and Proposition Y runs-out after another 30 years, which means 60 years from now the bond would be paid.

In addition, the South Bay Union School District attempted to pass Proposition O in 2010 which would have given them more tax dollars from property owners at the tune of over 1.7 MILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR for FOUR YEARS! Thanks to the voters, the proposition failed.

After years of inept poor accounting and reporting practices, no checks or balance procedures, the District's Adminstrative Staff in charge of the Budget are leading the School District to deficit spend.

As a result, for the last 10 years, our community has felt this need placed upon the citizens of this community to bare the weight of the District's poor management of funds.

Teachers and school workers have not had a cost of living wage increase in the last 10 years and according to the South Bay Union School District Fiscal Review from August 19, 2011 employees won't be getting any cost of living wage increase for another 10 years.

Year after year our teachers and school workers have been laid-off. At times some teachers are rehired; however, school workers are not. A laid-off school worker creates less support staff in the office, instructional assistants, student supervisors, accounting offices and student services staffing and every year lay-offs of school workers gets worse.

As a result our community is getting smaller and smaller, the jobs have gone and so has direct services to our children. There are more home foreclosures in our community because there are no jobs thus we have a decline in enrollment.

The South Bay Union School District needs BUDGET ACCOUNTABLITY and if the District Superintendent, Ass't Superintendents, Directors of Departments to include Child Nutrition don't do their job they should be fired!

We the People of this community, tax payers, property owners, voters all need to go to the polls this November 6, 2012 and vote for CHERYL Quinones for the South Bay Union School District Board of Trustees.

Cheryl will bring about a new way of Budget Check and Balance Procedures through Board Policy and Administrative Regulations that will provide safe guards that prevent deficit spending. In hiring new and the review of current Administrative positions and their quality of work shall be reviewed and shared with the Board of Trustees by the Superintendent who will be responsible to ensure all checks and balances are correct and there is no deficit spending by the District Administrative Personal. Source: South Bay Union School District Fiscal Review August 2011