Focusing the Debate on Davis High School's Stadium Renovation

Back in December, the DJUSD school board made the decision to prioritize the modernization of the football stadium over that of Emerson Junior High. This has generated a lot of criticism for the school district from a number of different quarters. In general this criticism has been ill-founded and based on misconceptions of funding and other factors.

The purpose of this article is to clarify some of the issues. While there seems to be a good deal of criticism to go around, it should be criticism that is fact-based rather than based on misinformation.

I largely decided to do this article because the school board and district's perspective is, we had a full public discussion about this at least twice in open meetings. People can view the tapes of those meetings if they are confused.

That is of course not how it works. The district needs to do a better job of communicating with the public. People do not watch the meetings and they will not watch the tapes of the meeting. At least most people will not. They may not even read the newspaper on the issue. But that will not stop them from forming opinions and even expressing those opinions.

Likely then that means the issue of communication falls to entities such as the Vanguard which can breakdown complex issues and discuss them at length rather than being confined to 500 words, 800 words, even 1200 words.

For that reason I have decided to go ahead with this explanation, even though I'm not sure what decision I would have made had I been a board member in December or February. Criticisms as I said should be fact-based and then people can make up their own minds.

A letter appears February 20, 2009 in the Davis Enterprise from 24 teachers at Cesar Chavez Elementary School.

They wrote:

"Fourth, we oppose the plan to build a $10 million high school stadium while there are schools such as Emerson Junior High which, last year, was under consideration for closure due to dilapidated facilities. Additionally, the long-term effects of the stadium financing on the general fund are not clearly delineated, and a clear payment plan has not been developed."

For this we need to back up several steps. Last spring, the district was facing a $4.5 million deficit. To that into perspective, what we face now which is roughly $3.1 million is a two year deficit. The scale of that deficit dwarfed this one in a lot of ways. So one thing the district was looking at was they knew off the bat they could save over $600,000 by closing a school.

The next part of this was the condition of Emerson Junior High. The district knew that it needed upgrades and repairs. However, what they did not know at that time was whether those needed upgrades and repairs were safety violations. This all happened so quickly that the district was in danger of making decisions based on less than complete information. This is very important to understand, to a good degree, the condition of the facilities in Spring of 2008 was unknown and all discussions were speculation.

Based on this and the problems of logistics that arose, the district made the decision not to close Emerson Junior High at that time and evaluate the facilities at a later point.

In June 2008, the district completed its evaluation. The evaluations indicate that the district will need to spend between $10 and $15 million on upgrades to Emerson. However, what they were told was that this was not an imminent safety problem. Much of the needed upgrades and repairs were to get it up to date with current code requirements. According to the consultants at the December meeting, that can happen at any time. Basically those requirements only kick in if the school were to do a major construction project.

School board Tim Taylor made it a point to talk about this back in December. He acknowledged rumors of deteriorating conditions in the buildings at Emerson but again added that there rumors were not borne out by the actual surveys by architects.

So when the teachers say there were school such as Emerson that were under consideration for closure due to dilapidated facilities, that is both misleading and really out of date information. The correct statement would have been that the district was looking to cut costs last spring and the conditions of the buildings while not known at the time, were cited as a possible reason for closure of the school.

I have said before and I will say again, I do not believe that any board members or any administrator wants to close Emerson. That is based on personal discussions with just about all of them. Moreover, looking at the three year finances, I do not see a reason that the district would need to close Emerson. They may play with the configurations, but I believe with strong certainty that Emerson is in no danger at this point of closing.

I spent more space than anticipated addressing the Emerson rumor, but that was important to put to bed. At a future point, there will be an article that fully explains the financing of the football stadium at Davis High School.

At this point, here is what we know. The district believes it can get redevelopment money for a portion of this project. That redevelopment money can only be used for school facilities, not for teacher salaries or other instructional expenses.

Second, the district is planning on borrowing about $4 million against future revenues from the school district's community facilities districts. Again those funds can be used for school facilities only, not for teacher salaries.

See a pattern here. I am uncertain what the teachers meant when they stated: "the long-term effects of the stadium financing on the general fund are not clearly delineated." To my knowledge there will be no impact on the general fund since these monies do not and CANNOT come from general fund monies.

There has been considerable public outcry to this point about the project. In part the money issue is driving this. Part of that stems from the perception that the district is starving for money on one hand but taking up a $10 million project on the other. Again, that perception is wrong and misplaced because of the differential in types of funding.

The other issue with funding is that the district chose DHS over Emerson. They did this in December. There is no getting around the fact that they consciously prioritized DHS Stadium over Emerson. As I have already explained that does not mean they are closing Emerson. They simply believe that DHS Stadium is more pressing.

Again, I turn to a letter to the editor, this one from New Year's eve:

"Unquestionably, the appalling condition of the Blue Devils' stadium calls for its replacement. But in these desperate economic times is a costly restoration the best option? Especially when it likely means stalling desperately needed restoration at Emerson."

One of the questions is of course whether the restoration at Emerson is really desperately needed.

However, what is clear is that this is not merely an issue of the football program at the high school. This is not merely a matter of putting academics ahead of athletics or the appearance of vice-versa.

What this comes down to is a health and safety issue. The district was told by consultants and by students that there are safety issues not just with the football field, but with the track and with the stands. The district believes they face liability if this issue is not corrected and that liability would come out of the general fund whereas the repair comes from facilities money.

Again, that is the issue and the basis on which they made their decision. Are there alternatives to renovating the field? That is subject to debate and discussion. The district seemed to consider alternatives such as using Toomey Field, that seemed to be cost-prohibitive as well. Moreover it was impractical for everyday usage. Remember it is not merely the athletics programs that use the facilities but there is everyday usage.

Regardless, I think the question about alternatives is a fair discussion point. I also think the question about prioritization is a fair discussion point as long as understand the facts at this time suggest that Emerson is not going to be shutdown due to health and safety issues and the district's consultants believe that DHS Stadium faces more imminent and significant health and safety concerns than Emerson.

So to quickly summarize here: Emerson is not closing due to health and safety concerns. DHS Stadium will not use monies that could go to the classroom. The district believes the situation is more critical at DHS Staidum where Emerson mainly faces code upgrades that are not needed until construction occurs in the future.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

District Does Grande Property the Right Way and It Will Pay Off

Last night at the Davis City Council meeting, the City Council heard from the school district for the first time about the 41-unit proposed development on DJUSD property that the district has been hoping to sell for some time in order to provide some additional facilities money through the California Education Code’s provisions for the sale of public surplus property.

The result of the meeting was a unanimous 5-0 by the council to move the process forward. At the conclusion of the item, a good sized number of the Grande Property neighbors stood up and cheered. It was the end of a long process, but the last year and a half of this process has marked a model for government agency inter-cooperation between the school district and the city and an equally impressive model for government agency-neighborhood cooperation.

It was only just over one year ago, in their November 18, 2007 Op-Ed in the Davis Enterprise, that former DJUSD Board Trustees Marty West and Joan Sallee accused the newer school board with fiscal mismanagement regarding the Grande Property. They wrote:

“When we left the school board in December 2005, the finances of the school district were in good shape. Any financial mismanagement that has occurred has been on the 2006 and 2007 school board's watch. In early 2006, the board majority rescinded the $5.5 million contract we had signed to sell the Grande Avenue site, thus jeopardizing funding for building a student commons at the high school and modernizing Emerson Junior High School.”

The Vanguard has largely debunked that argument with a detailed recount of the Grande issue that was run on March 10, 2008 as the third installment in the Vanguard Investigation into Tahir Ahad and the dealings of the DJUSD Business Office under his leadership.

In 2005, there was no chance that the neighbors would have stood up and cheered. The early process was marred by neighborhood complaints and backdoor deals, the likes of which are still not fully known even after the Vanguard's investigation.

The gist of the arrangement was a shady three way trade in which the district fearing the city to the invoke the Naylor Act and require sale to the city at below market, tried to swap the land with UC Davis property near the Fairfield school and then sell the land to a Bay Area based developer.

From the March 10, 2008 Vanguard:

The arrangement that Superintendent David Murphy and Tahir Ahad had employed by October of 2005 was a land swap that involved a UC Davis property that was the home of Fairfield Elementary School. This piece of property that the university had not wanted was offered to Davis Joint Unified for at least three years prior to this land exchange. The university had been willing to simply give DJUSD the Fairfield School property at no cost.

Instead, the school district would enter into an agreement with BP Equities in which BP Equities would pay the school district $4.5 million in exchange for helping the school district to acquire the 10-acre site west of Davis. In essence, Davis Joint Unified would trade BP Equities the Grande Property in exchange for $4.5 million and the Fairfield School.

Coincidentally, this $4.5 million happened to be the same monetary amount that the district lost out on matching funds from the state when they missed the Montgomery Elementary school deadline. Questions have arisen as to whether the speed, urgency, and also secrecy of this deal had something to do with that lost funding.

The land exchange generated a large amount of controversy in the community. Under pressure for the seemingly sub-market value sale price, the offer was raised on November 22, 2005 to $5.5 million and the deal was locked in.

In the meeting when the board rescinded the original sale, Board member Provenza expressed his concerns for the process:

“I have an ethical concern about going forward because I feel that the process from the beginning was flawed. And it’s not because of anything that Mr. [Brian] Purcell [from BP Equities] did, he was negotiating with Tahir Ahad in good faith, but our process I believe was flawed from the beginning."

While that deal was approved by the previous board featuring Ms. West and Ms. Sallee, the newly elected board featuring Gina Daleiden, Sheila Allen, and Tim Taylor joined fellow board member Jim Provenza in rescinding the deal in early 2006, much to the chagrin of Joan Sallee and Marty West, who nearly two years later were raising the issue again last November.

It is interesting to note a letter from the Grande Neighborhood Association still posted on their site from September 2005:

"We also learned that Tahir [Ahad] and B.J. [Kline] were working under the impression that the neighborhood endorsed development of the Grande site for 48 homes (Alternative B that we discussed during the neighborhood meeting and potluck in June). We told him that was not the case - the neighborhood supported the concept of the other alternative, which had 33 homes, and was generally consistent with R-1-6 zoning (like that on the west side of the Grande site)."

Note the lack of communication between the two parties. Also note the fact that the district and neighborhood ended up splitting the difference in density right down the middle, with the neighborhood making it a point to give the district last night 41 units which the district wanted quite badly.

Since the time of that letter and the eventual board decision to go ahead with the sale, the district has completely changed its approach. They have met extensively with the Grande Neighborhood Association. They have worked out a deal with the district and the city to develop a 41-unit subdivision which reflects the basic density of the surrounding neighborhood.

Several neighbors came up and raised minor concerns with the plan but were thankful to the district for working with them on their concerns. The biggest concern was the safety issue of bikes pouring out onto Grande Avenue.

So the city council moved one of the lots, lot #9 it was called, which sat on the outside of the development. They agreed to turn that lot into a community gardens in order to allow bike traffic to flow there rather than through the more heavily traveled Mercedes Road which would flow into the new subdivision.

By working with the city, the district helped the neighbors to identify a longstanding safety issue. There are still some details that need to be worked out, but the neighbors are comfortable enough with the process and the commitment of both the city and DJUSD to addressing them, that the project has been moved forward and fast tracked.

One of the issues still be resolved is that the school district would like to prioritize affordable units for their own employees. That will have to take place by lottery and the district has agreed to indemnify the city should the issue of discrimination come up.

All of these issues should be addressed by January when this comes up for a second reading to the ordinance.

Many involved describe this as a win-win-win scenario for all involved. The school district has worked extensively with the neighbors to produce an acceptable development proposal. The district and city have worked close together rather than against each other as typified the early part of the process where the district tried to pull a shady deal out of fear that the city would invoke the Naylor Act.

Instead what we will see come forward is a fully entitled property that will hit the market. Even given the economic downturn and collapse of the housing market, there is nothing more rare in Davis than fully entitled property. As such, when the district puts it on the market, the selling price will well-exceed the $5.5 million that the district would have gotten had they gone through with the sale. Even at that time, there were credible offers, and the Vanguard has seen these in writing, from credible local developers for as much as $8 to $9 million. They sold it quickly to avoid public scrutiny.

From this standpoint alone and from the standpoint of working with the neighbors to gain approval, the district has contradicted the complaints of its two former board members.

But in all likelihood, the district will get far more than the $5.5 million. A prospective owner will quickly recognize that they do not have to build immediately, but rather they can buy the property and wait for the right market. The value is that they know this is Davis property and that the land is fully entitled and they only need to go ahead with the development agreement to make a huge profit.

It is a winning solution for all involved and shows the value of transparency and cooperation. This is the model now for how to do business whereas the previous process was the very model for how not to do business.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

DJUSD Moves Toward Changing Election Cycle

As I mentioned in a previous article on this subject, the move from odd-year elections for DJUSD board members to even-year elections make complete sense from a democratic standpoint and a budgetary standpoint.

From a political standpoint both Bob Dunning and Richard Harris expressed concerns about the major drawback, the fact that the board members would essentially be extending their term for a year. Looking at the issue purely from this standpoint however, obscures the benefits of the move. The biggest being the huge budget impact. But the secondary point being democratic factors. In 2007, around 30% of people turned out to vote for DJUSD board elections, Measure P, and Measure Q. In 2008, over 80% of the voters turned out to vote in the Presidential election and by extension in the Measure W election. Even in an average mid-term election, you are looking at well over 50% of the vote. To me it makes perfect sense and I will share more in the commentary portion of this article.

The board last night had their third discussion on this item without taking a vote. However, there is a clear three member board majority that favors this move pending a vote possibly next week.

The big change necessitating the move is also the fact that DJUSD would be the only election matter on the ballot in odd years and thus would have to bare the full cost of the election.

In a memo from Sandra Fowles, DJUSD Director of Fiscal Services she explains the impact:

"The district shared the ballot costs in 2007 with the Yolo Library District locally and the county costs with West Sacramento, Yolo County Office of Education (YCOE), and Woodland. In 2005 a statewide special election was held and the district shared costs with the state, the City of Davis locally and county wide with YCOE, Esparto, Winters and Woodland. In the election years of 2001 and 2003 the district did not share the costs with another district locally but shared the costs with other school districts county wide. The cost to run a Board member election in 2007 was 245% more than 2005. The cost is expected to increase another 43% for 2009 if Davis Joint Unified is to remain the sole election contest on the ballot for the November election.

The ability to conduct the district election strictly by mail is not currently an option. The County of Yolo is pursing legislation giving Yolo County this right."

County Clerk Freddie Oakley wrote the school district in September:

"The result of using that formula for the first time was a really awful "sticker shock". We subsequently adjusted the billed amounts downwards by removing some of the items that we were billing for the first time. In order to maintain a spirit of fairness and cooperation with the districts, we have permanently removed some of those items from the billing formula - for instance, the cost of my salary and the cost of some "allowable overhead." Any further adjustment would necessitate raising the issue with our auditor and Board of Supervisors.

In discussing ways to reduce or minimize election costs for the districts, we have discussed the advisability of districts changing their election schedules so that they move from the odd-year "Uniform District Election Code" (UDEL) schedule to the even-year "General Election" schedule.

We have posited that such a change would afford the districts the economies of scale that are the result of sharing the expenses of transportation, poll worker costs, "real estate space" on the ballot, and other inflexible expenses."

Board Member Richard Harris remains adamantly against the change, arguing that the voters voted him in for a four-year term, he considers it wrong to take an extra year.

Since he said it very succinctly in his December 4, 2008 letter to the editor in response to Bob Dunning's column, I will use his words from that which he forcefully reiterated last night:

"I will not vote to extend my own term of office because I don't believe elected officials should extend their own time in office.

I consider it a privilege to be on the school board and thank the people who voted me into office last year. But it is their right, not mine, to extend that term.

There may be savings from consolidating elections and I look forward to more discussion about the issue. But as I stated the other night, there are also benefits to school board elections being run separately from other elections.

We should consider those benefits versus potential savings from consolidating future elections without interjecting the notion of unilaterally extending our own terms."

Board Member Tim Taylor however passionately and eloquently summed up the counter-argument which seems to be carrying the day:

"The people elect you to take care of this district, and for anybody to say, well, 2009 we'll just bite the bullet, is not taking care of this district. And quite frankly I think that's thinking of the individual and not thinking of the collective. I think our job is to think about this district and think about the collective and think about what's in the financial health and security of this district. This is not a power grab for anybody, believe me. This is not even a personally wise decision for anybody to do on a personal level. It's only about the district. To think well it's not in my interest or I am somehow violating the trust... is the complete wrong way to look at this. The public has entrusted you with the financial security and the health of this district and if you say I'm going to spend fifty thousand dollars, much less a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, much less five hundred thousand dollars in 2009 that you don't have to spend, you're not entrusting, taking on that public trust ability. And quite frankly that is the beginning and end of the story."

Mr. Taylor doesn't see this as an equal decision, but he said that there are real on the ground consequences

Past Board President Sheila Allen:

"I am willing to take one for the team, to stay one more year if it meant a school could stay open, a teacher's job could be saved..."

She continued:

"I would do all sorts of things for this school district to save programs."

Newly elected Board President Gina Daleiden summed it up:

"I agree with what Tim and Sheila have said because I closed a school, we're still battle scarred from that. I won't do that again for a few more months because I have a funny feeling about it."

Ms. Daleiden continued:

"I think it's a no-brainer when you are talking about laying off teachers and destroying programs."

I agree with the position of Boardmembers Taylor, Allen, and Daleiden. I think this is a no-brainer. Frankly, if the biggest cost is the political future of board members because of this move, it is a small price to pay. It is far better than the prospect of closing a school or laying off teachers. We are not talking about a small sum of money here, we are talking about perhaps half a million or more. That's a school right there. That's perhaps eight FTE teaching positions.

I think Tim Taylor is absolutely correct when he said that the voters elected the board to take care of the district, and this is the best way to take care of the district.

One of the first votes I cast was in an election in San Luis Obispo which consolidated the ballot to even years. From a financial standpoint it makes sense and from the standpoint of democracy, getting good voter participation it makes sense. The 30 percent turnout in 2007 was both a waste of taxpayer money and problematic for democracy. And we saw that the city could support education even when 80%-plus turn out at the polls and I suspect people were as aware if not more aware of Measure W as opposed to Measure Q.

One final point, it seems like they would put the parcel tax on February 2012 ballot and it would take effect for the fall. The downside to that is that if it were to fail, the district would have some difficulty getting it on the June 2012 ballot. But it may be possible. That would be the only hurdle to that dilemma, I know people were asking about it for the townhall meeting.

As Tim Taylor pointed out, this is not a political power grab, this is a prudent economic cost savings during one of the worst financial times ever. If board members such as Richard Harris are uncomfortable with that, and I can respect his trepidation, they can always resign. I do not say that flippantly and I hope that Mr. Harris, despite my perhaps policy disagreements with him, does not resign over this matter.

It appears this will be put to rest next week, I hope they can vote on it and I hope it does not end up a 3-2 vote, which might be more harmful than the action itself.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

Down the Homestretch for Measure W: Multiple Views on the Ballot Measure

If Measure W passes, the good news is that Vanguard readers will have plenty of other things to read about and this blogger who sometimes acts as a reporter will not have to stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning to watch school board meetings.

Yesterday someone in the comment section asked me how much I was getting paid by the district, implying that I was a shill for them. I can understand how someone would feel that way. I have spent many many hours in the last year working on this blog and elsewhere to get Measure W passed.

Granted I have been talking about a parcel tax for far longer, but the first mention of Measure W was August 3, 2008 on this blog. Since then this will be the 17th article I have done mentioning Measure W.

Tomorrow, we will have a very special report on the Measure Q oversight committee. I encourage everyone skeptical of that process to read what Bob Schelen has to say.

Today, we are going to take a look at what a number of people and others are saying about Measure W.

The Davis Enterprise has letters from four of the five school board members supporting Measure W. I am not certain if Susan Lovenburg has already submitted a letter, but if she has not, do not read anything into it. She was out at the MU on Monday working hard trying to tell students about Measure W.

Board President Sheila Allen actually posted this on the Vanguard as well, yesterday.

I am going to post her entire post here for those who do not read the comment section.

She directed people to note that she is a strong supporter of neighborhood schools:

"Note especially the last paragraph. I am a firm supporter of neighborhood schools for many reasons that I have publicly presented during School Board meetings for the Valley Oak and the Emerson discussions. Please show your support by Voting Yes on W."

Here's the body of her letter:

"We moved to Davis because of the great schools. This is true for our family. I have received many emails from concerned citizens that begin with that very sentence. But, because of an on-going decline in state funding for public education the ability to continue our great programs is at stake.

This year the district cut $1.1 million dollars from the budget and still faced the specter of cutting an additional $2 million in program. With a budget that is over 80% direct student-related personnel, these dollars mean teacher jobs. Last spring hundreds of students, teachers, parents and community members lined up to ask that their program or position would not be cut. Luckily, the Davis Schools Foundation was able to rally the community to temporarily fill the gap for this school year only. Measure W will mean the teachers and our programs will continue for the next 3 years. Measure W means the Davis public schools will continue to be a great place to learn for all of our students.

On November 4 you have the opportunity to provide a solution. Coming to protest in March will not be a solution. The solution to save the teachers and program is now--and it is Measure W! Please vote yes on W."

Then Gina Daleiden and Tim Taylor:

"Clear and straightforward, if you support science, math, English, foreign language, music, social studies, librarians, athletics, debate, journalism and the teachers who enliven the minds of our next generation, then you support Measure W. The choice is clear.

We are all too aware of the state budget crisis and the impact that has on school funding. Local dollars are needed to maintain our quality programs here in Davis - among the best in the state - because state dollars simply do not.

You may find yourself asking, is the school district running leaner in these trying economic times? Absolutely. DJUSD spends more than 80 percent of our discretionary budget on expenses directly related to classroom instruction - teachers, counselors, principals and para-educators. Of the remaining percentage, we've cut $1.1 million, including eliminating one of the top three administrative positions, squeezing site budgets to levels difficult to sustain, and cutting operating costs. Our administrative budget falls in the lowest tier in the state, lower than most school districts, and even lower than many nonprofit organizations.

Despite all of this, the shortfall in funding is over $2 million annually. It is simply not possible to cut these funds without severely impacting the classroom and our kids. Vital programs and teachers will be lost. Our school system, our community and, most importantly, our children will lose."

Boardmember Richard Harris makes a plea that they need a two-thirds vote:

"To succeed, we need two votes in favor of Measure W for every one vote against it. Unlike the presidential race, where a candidate can win without gaining the most votes nationwide, or the local bond measure for community college facilities that can pass with only 55 percent of the vote, we need a super-majority of two-thirds support to pass Measure W. A simple majority will not be enough to save our schools.

Measure W is a true test of this community's willingness to take local responsibility in these uncertain economic times for key education programs like science, math, music and libraries.

We've reached out to voters during this campaign and we know a majority of voters, and overwhelmingly parents, support investing $10 a month in their community. A clear majority of voters definitely agrees with The Enterprise, the Chamber of Commerce and the Yolo County Taxpayers Association that Measure W is good for the schools and the community.

But there are many more potential voters in households without students attending Davis schools than households with children in the schools.

So parents, now is the time to get out of your comfort zone and go talk to your neighbors who don't have school-age kids. Tell them about Measure W, emphasize that strong Davis schools make our community strong and Davis a better place to live. Earn their support and then make sure they vote."

Do not take the word just for the elected members of the school board. A few weeks ago, the Sacramento Bee Endorsed a Yes on Measure W vote, citing: "APPROVING PARCEL TAX WILL PRESERVE A TRADITION OF GOOD SCHOOLS"

They write:

"Voters approved the last four-year parcel tax in November 2007, for $200 per parcel.

Since that 2007 parcel tax passed, however, the state's budget situation has worsened, and with it the situation in local school districts. The Davis school district faced $2.8 million in cuts this last year. A one-time fundraising effort by the Davis Schools Foundation staved off $1.77 million in cuts, but the district still had to chop $1 million out of the budget.

So now the Davis school board is back, asking voters to add $120 a year to the 2007 parcel tax to avoid program cuts. Measure W would raise $2.4 million a year for the next three years."

They continue:

"The additional $2.4 million a year would allow the Davis schools to preserve elementary science and music programs; preserve librarians at elementary and secondary schools; preserve class-size reductions for ninth- and 10th-grade English and math; preserve class periods for foreign language, music and physical education; and preserve extracurricular drama, debate, journalism and sports programs.

Measure W does not fund new programs.

If voters do not pass the parcel tax, the school district will have to cut $2.4 million from its budget."

They discuss a criticism of the parcel tax:

"The main criticism of parcel taxes in general is that because they are a flat fee on every parcel, lower-income households bear a disproportionate share of the burden. Davis mitigates that by making the parcel tax lower on apartments ($50, instead of $120 in Measure W) and by exempting property owners age 65 and older, who fill out a form and return it to the school district."

Finally:

"Davis residents have a long history of extraordinary support for their schools, and every school in the district performs above state goals on the Academic Performance Index. To continue the tradition of excellence, Davis voters should vote "yes" on Measure W."

Here are a couple of fliers, in case you have not seen them. The first, is a flier sent out by the Davis Teachers' Association and I'm not sure where the other one comes from.

---David Greenwald reporting

Commentary: Painful Times Ahead for DJUSD

This is what we have come to--on Thursday night, the Davis School District, faced with a huge budget cut, put on the table the notion of rolling back teacher salaries by 2 percent. The motion was made by Richard Harris and seconded by Susan Lovenberg.

If the motion had been approved, Mr. Harris would then have asked administrative staff to take a similar temporary pay cut.

The idea purportedly came from one of the PTA presidents, who wondered how many teaching positions could be saved if teachers would agree to forgo their salary increases until after the state budget approval, which is expected to happen sometime in the late summer or early fall.

Richard Harris operated under the belief that up to $1 million would be added to the budget from the state once the agreement is actually reached but by that point it would be too late to do much with the current budget--unless you are dealing with salaries that could be the first thing adjusted once a budget passes.

There is a logic to Richard Harris' proposal, but the rest of the board Tim Taylor, Gina Daleiden, and Sheila had serious doubts.

One problem was that the idea came forward from a board member rather than either the Davis Teachers Association or the California School Employees Association. In fact, the president of DTA, Tim Paulson told the board that a 1 percent salary rollback had been proposed at a recent meeting but failed without so much as a second. CSEA also had problems with a rollback.

Tim Taylor I think clinched it in my mind:

"If we pass this motion, we're saying (to employees) 'Why don't you step up to this 2 percent?' We're not asking this of doctors and lawyers. ... We're asking this of teachers and other staff who we'll all admit are not paid enough already."

Sheila Allen examined whether there was even time to pursue such negotiations, but Kevin French indicated that there was not.

For Sheila Allen it became an issue of timing:

"I don't think we can get the information out to the membership to put the money back into the budget in time so that we can use it. I can't support this motion tonight."

In the end, the correct answer probably came from both Sheila Allen and Gina Daleiden--from a practical standpoint, it is not clear that they could have gained sufficient buy-in from the teachers in the amount of time available to contemplate such a decision.

The choices here are quite horrific, at this point in time, it is really not a realistic option. On a philosophical level, I think I have to side with Tim Taylor, himself a lawyer. Asking people who are not paid enough to begin with, to take a pay cut, does not seem a responsible course of action. But then again, cutting positions is not a comforting action either.

In the meantime, the board also delayed the decision on additional pink slips to classified employees, that decision will be made on April 28, 2008 at the very earliest.

It seems to me that the district has taken a lot of options off the table, but at the same time, it seems pretty clear that they still have to make these deep cuts. None of these cuts are going to painless. They already decided that they could not close a school on this kind of notice, which is probably the right decision but it nevertheless puts another $500,000 in cuts back into play.

Hence we have the proposal to cut classified positions. However, now six elementary school principals warn that serious problems will result if school secretaries' hours are reduced.

Here's what I have come to the conclusion about watching this process. There has been perennial speculation out there that public schools are run inefficiently, that they waste huge amounts of money. And yet, when push comes to shove and they actually have to make deep and real cuts, they are not able to do it painlessly. To me that's an indication that there is not nearly as much waste in a school district as people think.

Perhaps there were too many administrators, but even cutting some did not dent the budget and the amount of work performed by the administration, I think is severely underestimated. The additional workload with reduced staff will have consequences.

On a school site itself, who are you going to cut? Teachers? Secretaries? Principals? Other support staff? Each of those carries with it, vital tasks and duties.

When we are talking about cutting salaries for professionals who -most in society acknowledge- get paid too little to begin with, you suddenly realize that the amount of waste in public schools is not nearly what most think it is. We can cut painlessly perhaps on the margins, but once we get into real cuts, there is nothing but pain to go around and that's why these decisions are so difficult and why the process is taking so long. In the end, we are going to have to make decisions and do things that really hurt--that is the only way to avoid even worse consequences of losing control of the operations of our district.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Vanguard Commentary: Schools and the 8th Assembly Race

SCHOOLS

Two separate items of interest in the news this week. We'll start with schools because it is amazingly what is on everyone's mind. I say amazingly because flashing back to last October that was about the last thing anyone wanted to talk about on this blog. Now it is virtually all people are interested in, even with a looming City Council election which is usually the creme de la creme of Davis politics.

The school board decision is a very interesting decision because it is the outcome that I preferred--I did not want Emerson to close and yet in many ways I think the decision is problematic at best.

It is my hope that the wrath does not shift to Boardmembers Tim Taylor and Gina Daleiden on this. They both voted against the motion primarily not because they opposed keeping Emerson open, but rather because all of the options--school closings, reconfigurations, program and teacher cuts--needed to be on the table at the same time. And moreover, if they were not going to close the schools and reconfigure the secondary program, there needed to be concurrent cuts proposed so that they knew where the money was coming from that they needed to balance the budget.

Tim Taylor called this motion financially irresponsible.

Now I think there are good educational reasons to keep Emerson open, but then again I felt there were good educational reasons to keep Valley Oak open--and two of the members who voted to close Valley Oak, the two strongest proponents of that closing, led the way to keep Emerson open.

With this decision, the April 17 board meeting is looming large because it is at that meeting that the board will need to once again identify more than $4 million in cuts. With already more than 100 teachers and librarians receiving pink slips, we can only look on in horror wondering what next.

We wanted the school to remain open, I just hope we don't end up regretting that decision down the line. The district and board face some very tough choices in the coming weeks, we will have to see just how bad this decision ends up looking. In the meantime, parents of all junior high students and even a lot of high school students probably rested a bit easier last night knowing where their kids are kids to school.

8th Assembly District Race

Well if it means anything, Supervisor Matt Rexroad is now calling the race for West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon. It seems like the Assemblywoman Lois Wolk endorsement of Cabaldon's campaign has been known in inside circles for sometime, and even before it was official, it seemed like she was leaning that direction.

However this week, Mayor Cabaldon gained the Democratic Party's endorsement and the endorsement of the sitting Assemblywoman.

As Matt Rexroad states:

"I knew that it was coming last week. Now that it is official that Assemblywoman Wolk has endorsed Cabaldon for Assembly I think it is over.

For weeks I have been telling people that Cabaldon is favored but they should not underestimate what Yamada can do on the ballot. This district wants to elect a woman. That ended yesterday.

With a huge endorsement advantage including support of the incumbent, a fund raising advantage that is going to approach a ratio of infinity:1, and the party endorsement, Cabaldon is the next Assemblyman for Woodland."

It was a nice ceremony on Thursday with Former Assemblymembers Tom Hannigan and Helen Thomson joining the sitting Assemblywoman and the candidate. And yet, where was the news coverage? There was not another member of the press at this event.

The public is really getting shortchanged on the local election coverage. No one else covered the candidates forum this week and that was with Davis Enterprise assistant publisher/ editor Debbie Davis as moderator of the forum and reporter Claire St. John in the audience seemingly taking notes. From the standpoint of the public making informed decisions, the information is scant from the mainstream press.

Back to the 8th Assembly race for a moment. One could argue that it might not have mattered anyway--Christopher Cabaldon has run a tremendous race, he has earned endorsements throughout the district from elected officials, he has captured the activist youth, and he has raised a huge amount of money.

At the same time, one has to wonder what if. At the beginning of 2007, Mariko Yamada was a fairly popular Supervisor who had strong support among the Davis Progressive community and then for some reason, she decided to back efforts to develop on Davis' borders. This drove her base into the arms of Christopher Cabaldon. You just cannot do that politics. And if that were it, that would have been bad enough, but from the start, she has been outworked on the campaign trail by Cabaldon and his team. And so even when she and her supporters put on a fullcourt press last weekend to avert an CDP endorsement for Cabaldon, she managed just 13 votes and just a 160 signatures. Too little, too late.

Is the race over? That is more difficult to assess since there are no reliable polls for the race or the district. But it is increasingly difficult to see a scenario where she even keeps the race close given both the advantage in terms of support among elected officials but also the monetary advantage. Her financial report from a week ago was frankly appalling. She is not bringing in money. One could theoretically overcome that with grassroots organization, but there is little evidence that she has produced that.

I stop short of declaring the race over, but at this point it does not look good from the Yamada campaign. And in some ways that is too bad because I still remember the Mariko Yamada who was the fighter for social justice. Sadly it appears she has even allowed Cabaldon to steal that mantle.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Davis School Board Votes to Keep Three Junior Highs

After long discussion over the last several weeks, the Davis School Board voted by a 3-2 vote to keep three juniors and keep the secondary schools in the same current configuration with Davis High School remaining a 10-12 program and DaVinci High School remaining on the Davis High School campus.

Gina Daleiden in her dissenting vote made it clear that the vote was not necessarily on the substance of the issue, but due to the fact that the vote was not tied to corresponding budget cuts. The same is true from Tim Taylor's vote as well.

In addition, the school board voted to keep hire three Principals to fill the vacancy at three elementary schools.

Earlier in the evening Superintendent James Hammond made a radical suggestion of offering to save the district over $100,000 by performing a duel role of Principal at an Elementary School while at the same time continuing to serve as the district's superintendent.

Gina Daleiden would say that "this is one time we need to save James, from James." Arguing that the situation was not feasible from a workload standpoint. She also suggested there would be a potential conflict to have the Superintendent of the District tied to one elementary school site.

The board would vote by a 4-1 margin to take this option off the table with Tim Taylor dissenting.

Commentary

I am pleased that Emerson Junior High is remaining open. It is a vital school in West Davis and while there are upgrades needed to the campus, it is only the fifth oldest campus in the school district. The building itself has a number of desirable features that lead me to want to preserve it as a vital Junior High.

That said there are a number of aspects of this particular vote that I am uncomfortable with, even as I am pleased with the outcome.

First, the fact that it was not tied to additional cuts, means that there remains more work to be done. The district has to meet a threshold in order to meet its budgetary requirements or it risks the county taking over its operations.

Second, I think Gina Daleiden's concern is quickly dismissed with regards to the cut of teachers and programs. Something has to be sacrificed in order to keep Emerson open and that might be more teachers or more programs. I hope we can find creative ways to do this, but if we do not, we need to recognize what this means for teachers and programs in the district.

Third, and this is probably my biggest concern--Richard Harris and Susan Lovenburg were two of the strongest proponents of closing Valley Oak and denying the charter. The stated reason was fiscal cost. Now, they have been the ringleaders to keep Emerson open which presents its own problems with fiscal cost. That does not sit well with me. To use the phrase of some on the board, this has become a sacred cow to these board members.

At least Sheila Allen was consistent on this issue--she voted to keep them all open. I would agree with her on both issues. Gina Daleiden and Tim Taylor were consistent as well, opting for fiscal prudence on both issues. While I disagree with them, I can respect their decisions.

However, I really need to understand the decision that Susan Lovenburg and Richard Harris made--the differentiation that they took. Does that differentiation amount to a rationalization or is there an actual tangible and clear reason that distinguishes the closing of Valley Oak from the maintenance of Emerson.

All of that said, keeping Emerson open is the right thing to do. The other choices were not good educational choices for the students involved. They required creating an overly crowded Davis High Campus, they required moving DaVinci students away from their logical location, and there was not a compelling demographic or attendance issue to necessitate this move. In short, the move was only made for the purposes of saving money. At this time that might be reason enough, but I still think you need to bear in mind educational considerations. I am not opposed to a 9-12 high school--I attended one myself. There are strong reasons to do it which is why the majority of the state has 9-12 high schools. However, there are also reasons not to do it, it keeps 9th graders in a better situation socially.

However, removing this option from the table now forces the district to look at other areas for cuts.

Everyone applauds the efforts of the Davis Schools Foundation. I am big supporter as well. They have raised $250,000 for the district which is wonderful, but it is less than one-tenth of the way to their goal and I just do not see them at this point getting anywhere near that goal.

I do not say this to bring people down, but we also must face reality. Parcel tax relief will not come until 2009. The Davis Schools Foundation is only going to help offset some of the worst cuts. The state may provide some relief but that will also come after the budget for next year is set in stone. The long and the short of it, is that we have dodged another school closure, but we are going to have to brace for a major hit, there is no way around it.

Finally, the demographic forecast shows that we will stabilize after this year. That means that declining enrollment will not have an ongoing impact of forcing additional steep budget cuts. Those who believe the solution to this is more growth need to look at a lot more closely at faster growth and larger cities--these cities have no escaped the problems of the budget nor are their schools doing better than ours. We need solid land use and growth policies in this city, but those should not be based on school enrollment priorities. The voters in this city have made a choice to support their schools vastly with parcel tax money while choosing to grow their city closely. People who think we can have better with faster growth policies might want to also consider what would happen if those new residents vote to cut off the parcel tax. In short, be careful what you wish for and plan wisely.

In the end, we are all in this together--the amount of civic spirit I have seen from students, teachers, and parents is amazing. We need to learn from this however--the lesson is the cost of complacency. Just four months ago there was so little interest in the school elections and now schools are all that are on people's minds. We need to focus our attention on these issues when we are not facing severe cutbacks. We must remain attentive and aware so that these types of things do not sneak up on us in the future.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Superintendent Hammond Says He Doesn't Want to Close Emerson

After over a hundred people spoke on Monday night at a jam packed Emerson Junior High Multipurpose Room. After the Superintendent and Bruce Colby painstakingly pointed out that that the cuts were real, the crisis was real, changes had to be made. After one by one, the Superintendent and Bruce Colby dispelled notions that they had emergency reserves. After one by one, they discredited any of the possible remedies offered up by the public and school board member alike. After they pointed out that even a new parcel tax would benefit the budget only in 2009.

After all of that school board member Susan Lovenberg asked a very simple but key question of the Superintendent, I've heard what we cannot do, what will your recommendation be?

After all of that, the Superintendent before a dwindling audience got up and said, he did not want to close Emerson. He would recommend against it. The remaining audience roared in delight.

Board Member Tim Taylor then said that he needed to see how they were going to make this work fiscally on Thursday night.

Let us step back a second. Back in January, Superintendent James Hammond worked long and hard with the Valley Oak petitioners in an attempt to get the Valley Oak Charter School approved. But he could not convince his board to take a leap of faith.

I met with him a few days after that meeting and he was as genuine as could be. The only thing he regretted was that he didn't have a few more days to convince the board to take a chance on the Charter School. He believed in it. He was truly remorseful that he was unable to convince the board about it.

I had always liked James Hammond, on that day, I recognized however that Hammond was a man of compassion and principle. So I believe him when he says he does not want to close Emerson Junior High. I guarantee you he believes that and I guarantee you he will find a way to make the numbers work.

The difference between the 4-1 to reject the Valley Oak Charter Petition and a possible vote to keep Emerson over is that it seems that Richard Harris and Susan Lovenburg support keeping Emerson open. Whether they get a third vote is another question. Richard Harris seems to believe it however, he apparently was telling parents not to worry, they would not close Emerson. I am not certain how he could know that for certain given Brown Act restrictions, but at the same time, I may also believe him.

On the other hand, they are going to have to find another $400,000. This is not a situation they can exactly play around with. If they do not get it right, if they do not cut enough, the County will take over the district. This was a point made over and over again last night.

I am all for creative solutions, I am all for keeping Emerson open, and I believe in Superintendent James Hammond, I just want to see the numbers. I am with Tim Taylor, show me how the numbers work and I am all for it. I am all for making it work. Hopefully come Thursday night, we will all believe.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Vanguard Investigation Part III: The Grande Property Agreement

The Vanguard continues its multipart series of former DJUSD Deputy Superintendent Tahir Ahad, Total School Solutions, and fiscal mismanagement of the Davis Joint Unified Business Office during Tahir Ahad’s tenure from 1999 to 2006 as CBO of DJUSD.

The first segment of this series which ran on Sunday, February 24, 2008 examined the inherent problems involved in a conflict of interest. The conflict of interest we examined involved a series of disturbing findings of how Mr. Ahad used his position as Chief Budget Officer (CBO) with the Davis Joint Unified School District as a means by which to start up his own private company for his own private gain. In short, he used public resources for private gain, a serious breach in the public trust.

The second portion of the series ran on March 3, 2008 and focused specifically upon the facilities planning and management beginning with the lost state matching funds for Montgomery Elementary, problems with Korematsu and eventually the King High debacle which led to the new school board finding out exactly what had been going on with the district’s facilities construction money. Basically money was shifted from later projects to make up for lost matching funds for Montgomery, lower than expected matching funds for Korematsu, and other cost overruns. Instead of acknowledging the depths of the problems, Mr. Ahad asked the school board in 2005 to pass a COP (Certificate of Participation), a form of debt financing, to pay for King High and some other projects. In 2006, the board learned that they only had half the money they needed to fund King High, and they realized that money had been shuffled, but only after an extensive investigation and the temporary halting of construction activities at King High.

This segment will continue to look at the facilities funding problems and other fiscal management issues. We examine the property exchange deal involving the Grande Property, which was a highly secretive and unusual process that we will argue violated a number of the California Education Code’s provisions for the sale of public surplus property.

Next week, we will also examine the FCMAT report and Consultant Terri Ryland’s findings. Future segments will include the efforts by the school district to rectify the problems that existed under Tahir Ahad and former DJUSD Superintendent David Murphy; some of which have already been discussed in previous issues. We are also following up on several different reports from other school districts about similar problems with Total School Solutions and Tahir Ahad. Last week in the Modesto Bee, a story was written about the Waterford School District. We will be looking further into that situation.

Grande Property

In 1971, the Davis Joint Unified School District purchased the Grande Property, which is located in North Davis, for the use of an elementary school in anticipation that Davis would continue to grow in a northern direction. They paid just under $60,000 at the time for that property; however, nothing was ever built and growth patterns in Davis have not continued north of the city.

With the growth in the real estate market during the past decades and inflation of housing and property values, the property is worth at least 100 times the value it was purchased, if not more.

The district realizing that it would likely not use the property for a future school began in the late 1990s to look into selling or exchanging the property. Those efforts moved into high gear in 2005.

Complicating any sale of school property is the Naylor Act or Education Code Section 17485 which governs the sale of certain land owned by a school district.

According to the City of Davis’ attorney, Harriet Steiner, the Naylor Act applies if the property meets three specific conditions. First the land must be used at least in part for “outdoor recreational purposes and is open space land particularly suited for recreational purposes.” Second, the land must have been used for those purposes for at least eight years. Third, there can be no other publicly owned land in the area of the site that is adequate for meeting “the existing or foreseeable needs of the community for recreational and open space purposes, as determined by the public agency proposing to purchase the land.”

If the Naylor Act applies:

Before selling or leasing the land, the district’s governing board must first offer it for sale or lease to the city within which the land is situated. § 17489. If offered for sale to the city, the city must notify the district of its intention to purchase the land within 60 days. § 17489. If the city chooses not to acquire the property, the district must then offer it to park districts, if any exist, and then to the county. Id. The selling price must be not less than 25% of the fair market value and not less than the school’s cost of acquisition, as adjusted for increase in the area cost of living3 and any improvements made by the school. § 17491.

There was a good deal of debate at that time and really even now as to whether or not the Naylor Act even applied given the third provision. There is also a good degree of speculation as to whether or not the city council at that time would have invoked the Naylor Act. Many claim that the city was not interested in the land, although those on the other side mention that at least one councilmember was interested in the use of the Naylor Act. However, the fear was that the school district could lose the property and gain just 25 percent of its worth should the city council choose to invoke the Naylor Act.

As a result, the school district went to great efforts under the leadership of Superintendent Murphy and Tahir Ahad to avoid an open sale that would risk a potential invocation of the Naylor Act. These tactics raise serious ethical and perhaps legal concerns.

From the start, the district met in closed door sessions and in secret during discussions involving the sale of the Grande Property. Instead of noticing the public via the public notice section of the newspaper as is generally required for such sales of public land, the notice was buried in the classified section of the Davis Enterprise where few would be looking for such a public notice.

The arrangement that Superintendent David Murphy and Tahir Ahad had employed by October of 2005 was a land swap that involved a UC Davis property that was the home of Fairfield Elementary School. This piece of property that the university had not wanted was offered to Davis Joint Unified for at least three years prior to this land exchange. The university had been willing to simply give DJUSD the Fairfield School property at no cost.

Instead, the school district would enter into an agreement with BP Equities in which BP Equities would pay the school district $4.5 million in exchange for helping the school district to acquire the 10-acre site west of Davis. In essence, Davis Joint Unified would trade BP Equities the Grande Property in exchange for $4.5 million and the Fairfield School.

Coincidentally, this $4.5 million happened to be the same monetary amount that the district lost out on matching funds from the state when they missed the Montgomery Elementary school deadline. Questions have arisen as to whether the speed, urgency, and also secrecy of this deal had something to do with that lost funding.

The land exchange generated a large amount of controversy in the community. Under pressure for the seemingly sub-market value sale price, the offer was raised on November 22, 2005 to $5.5 million and the deal was locked in.

Nevertheless, controversy continued to rain down on this deal. First, even the revised sales figure seemed too low. According to the best information the Vanguard has uncovered, even given a semi-secretive, non-open process, there were at least three other offers that the district had at the time of the sale that were considerably higher. One of these was from a West Sacramento developer who eventually threatened to sue the district. Another was from John Whitcombe who had proposed a trade of 160 acres for Grande. A third proposal offered anywhere from $7.5 million to $10.5 million and offered to front the development costs.

The existence of these higher offers caused former Davis Mayor Maynard Skinner, who was in attendance at the November 22, 2005 meeting, to proclaim angrily that the district had just “kissed” away $2.5 million.

The problems with the Grande deal were not merely fiscal in nature. There were also severe procedural problems with the manner in which this deal came down. From all appearances the District simply did not follow the procedures that were outlined in the Education Code for the sale of surplus school property.

Education Code Section 17466 specifies that ordering the sale or lease of any property must be done in open session at a regular open meeting. However, this by all accounts did not occur.

“Before ordering the sale or lease of any property the governing board, in a regular open meeting, by a two-thirds vote of all its members, shall adopt a resolution, declaring its intention to sell or lease the property, as the case may be. The resolution shall describe the property proposed to be sold or leased in such manner as to identify it and shall specify the minimum price or rental and the terms upon which it will be sold or leased and the commission, or rate thereof, if any, which the board will pay to a licensed real estate broker out of the minimum price or rental. The resolution shall fix a time not less than three weeks thereafter for a public meeting of the governing board to be held at its regular place of meeting, at which sealed proposals to purchase or lease will be received and considered.”

Section 17232 requires that the process must be open and remain open for no less than 60 days. The provision includes for the transfer of property in addition to outright sale.

“A school district's offer to sell or transfer the land shall be made to all park districts, cities, and counties in which the school district is wholly or partially situated pursuant to this article and shall remain open for not less than 60 days. The sale or transfer shall be made to whichever public entity first accepts the offer, or whichever public entity can negotiate satisfactorily for the purchase or transfer of the surplus land.”

Furthermore, the education guidelines stipulate that “a request to waive the bidding process for a lease or sale of surplus real property” must assure a number of things including that “no other state code section or another agency’s jurisdiction will be nullified in order for the request to become effective.” Furthermore, “waiver requests generally indicate that districts have complied with the Education Code requirements but have been unsuccessful in selling or leasing the property…” Education Code Section 33050.

In fact, the district did not request any such waiver. It certainly did not go through the normal process and failed to get a viable offer. No effort was ever made to go through a public, open bid process as the stipulation for waiver would seemingly require.

Furthermore even if granted the waiver, the district still must go through an open public process at a “regular open meeting” and “the governing board will announce, at a public meeting, the applicants deemed to be qualified.”

Education Code Section 17387 specifies:

“It is the intent of the Legislature to have the community involved before decisions are made about school closure or the use of surplus space, thus avoiding community conflict and assuring building use that is compatible with the community's needs and desires.”

Furthermore per Education Code Section 17388:

“The governing board of any school district may, and the governing board of each school district, prior to the sale, lease, or rental of any excess real property, except rentals not exceeding 30 days, shall, appoint a district advisory committee to advise the governing board in the development of districtwide policies and procedures governing the use or disposition of school buildings or space in school buildings which is not needed for school purposes.”

One of the requirements per Education Code Section 17389 is the appointment of a “school district advisory committee made up of no less than seven members and no more than 11 members. The term that those who have followed this process the last few years might be familiar with is the 7/11 Committee—so-called for the membership requirement. But in 2005, this was body was not formed.

Basically the Davis School District did not follow Education Code in the original Grande Property agreement with BP Equities. It was a secretive, closed door process that appears, to this non-lawyer, to have violated each of these provisions of Ed Code.

With a new board in place in the fall of 2005 and Board Members Gina Daleiden, Sheila Allen, and Tim Taylor on the board, the concerns of many in the community led the school board to re-examine the issue on March 16, 2006.

Davis City Manager Bill Emlen effectively took the Naylor Act option off the table during this meeting. According to the minutes from the meeting, “Mr. Emlen noted the city’s interest right now is on the best project for that neighborhood.”

Bill Emlen told the board, “The Naylor Act although relevant probably isn’t a defining factor in this case.”

Maynard Skinner speaking as a member of the public said, “In my opinion, the previous school board was in violation of the Brown Act, if not de jure, then de facto…”

Brian Purcell, the President of BP Equities was asked by then School Board Member Jim Provenza if there had been an appraisal on the Grande Property done prior to the agreement. Mr. Purcell told the board that there was not.

Jim Provenza would move to withdraw from the agreement. Tim Taylor seconded that motion.

School Board Member Keltie Jones told the board that she had serious concerns about withdrawing from the agreement.

“I have serious ethical concerns about withdrawing from this agreement; I think it was entered into in good faith. I think it was entered into with the understanding that this was an agreement that we would follow through with.”

She argued that she did not believe that property values in Davis were increasing and that the district could end up with less money.

Jim Provenza then issued forth a lengthy statement on the Grande Agreement from the dais.

“I have an ethical concern about going forward because I feel that the process from the beginning was flawed. And it’s not because of anything that Mr. Purcell did, he was negotiating with Tahir Ahad in good faith, but our process I believe was flawed from the beginning. To begin with it was not actively marketed. An ad was placed in the paper the Friday before the weekend with proposals due on Wednesday. A lot of people didn’t even hear about it until it was too late. Another ad was placed in a trade journal. I spoke to several realtors and developers who felt they were not wanted in the process. That a particular result or particular developer was desired from the beginning of the process. Whether that’s true or not that’s the perception that’s out there. But we did not have the type of active marketing to find everybody out there that might have been interested in the property, and getting bids.

Those bids that we did receive we received one as high as $9 million. We were told, well don’t pursue that one because we were told you have to exclusively negotiate. But we ended up negotiating with a single developer for what was initially a $4.5 million offer. There was no appraisal done before we entered into this agreement until the very day that we voted the first time. That was the first appraisal that we received that was done that week, although I had requested one several times. The response and I’m sure it was in good faith, was it doesn’t make sense to do appraisals, they always come out too low or they always come out lower than the amount being offered. On the night that we voted for $4.5 million, we had an appraisal that said it was worth $6.3 million. Remarkably, we went ahead anyway, but with an escape clause.

We sought two other appraisals. But prior to those two other appraisals we had a letter from the city making Naylor Act claims which was forwarded to those appraisers. I believe that that letter affected those appraisers and I think it affected the amounts of the appraisals. I can’t say for sure that’s it, but it makes me really question the process.

What I heard from one of the appraisers was that he was feeling pressured to come up with a lower amount. That made me question the process. We proceeded with an agreement that had various escape clauses. BP equity has the right to walk out of this deal for no money today—that’s what was written into the agreement. This district has the right to withdraw from the agreement.

If I felt that this process was fair and open to everyone, I would feel comfortable going forward. One of the things I found when looking for an example at one of the Public Record Act requests about documents concerning this, is that there was confusion even as to information as to how the deal was going to work. I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault, I don’t think it was intentional, but I think the process was flawed. I think that the prior board wanted to conclude this agreement before the new board was seated. I think that we were, as a board, giving away this property at a fire sale price. I can’t prove that, but that’s my impression. And I feel as if I have a fiduciary duty on behalf of the taxpayers and on behalf of the students of this district, to make sure that we are getting the most for this property.”

Jim Provenza’s statement confirms a number of aspects of this process that we have mentioned. To begin with the property was not actively marketed. That raises questions about the sale price that was obtained. There was a reluctance to get an appraisal for the property. When Mr. Provenza requested an appraisal, a number of excuses were furnished in an attempt to avoid such as appraisal that would show the reality of the deal that the district was getting.

By far the most important implication is that one of the appraisers was “feeling pressured to come up with a lower amount.” While the appraiser would not go on the record about this incident, he did confirm the accuracy of Jim Provenza’s public statement. It appears that the district, and specifically Superintendent Murphy, apparently in trying to justify the low price for Grande, is alleged to have attempted to obtain a lower assessed price for the property. That is the opposite of what one would expect from a district that was badly in need of funds.

To this day, there remains no good answer as to why the Superintendent and CBO did this. One can only speculate on the rationale.

Current Board President Sheila Allen told the Vanguard during our interview was asked about reversing the decision to sell Grande:

“My recollection of why we reversed the decision—I think it was in my first meeting—is because I didn’t think it was the best deal for the taxpayers and the students of the district. I thought that we could do much better financially with an open process for the community. I had a problem with the process and with the amount of money and so I wanted us to have an opportunity to come in and start over. I truly believe—we’ll have to see what get for the sale price of it and subtract off because we have had some consultant work on it—but I can’t to see exactly what it is in the end that will have done a better service for the students.”

Current Board Vice President Gina Daleiden:

“In all of my conversations, before I was elected and after I was elected, in reports to the board, so my conversations with people who talked to me individually and also who did reports to the board who were professionals in land use/design/development field, the consensus was that Grande would be much more valuable sold as entitled property instead of as raw land which was what the first sale/ exchange was to be. Particularly if the school district as a public entity could find a way to work cooperatively with the city as a public entity to help us along with the entitling of that property we would really increase the value to the developer who would eventually buy the entitled land.”

Why was this agreement rushed through? Was it an effort to cover up for the loss of Montgomery? Was there another financial relationship between members of the district and BP Equities? That is not clear. Jim Provenza would not speak on the record beyond what he said at the public meeting in March of 2006. And those currently seated on the board were not in a position to know.

The district working with the city and developers is working on an entitlement process at present that is likely to bring in a far more lucrative sale from the property.

Current Board Vice President Gina Daleiden would explain the current process.

“The board has had a subcommittee of me and Tim Taylor, along with two members of the city council Don Saylor and Steve Souza. Katherine Hess from planning is staff for the city and Tom Lombrazo, who is a professional in land use and design is our staff person on this. We’ve been meeting including the neighbors in public—they are public to the extent that anybody is welcome to come, often the Grande neighbors are the only ones who choose to come. Usually reporters come in and out and I think just one other community came, maybe we’ve had two.

We can work cooperatively with the neighborhood association and have an open process. We have an MOU/MOA signed by the full board and the full city council… It basically says we’re going to work cooperatively together and try to maximize the value for the school district as well as fit the existing neighborhood and be a positive project for the town. We’re actually getting pretty close to being able to go back to the full board to get a decision on something to take to the city to their planning department… We’re going to put a tentative map on the property that shows how many lots and then we will sell those. The board will decide when to sell those and how.”

In their November 18, 2007 Op-Ed in the Davis Enterprise, Marty West and Joan Sallee argued:

“When we left the school board in December 2005, the finances of the school district were in good shape. Any financial mismanagement that has occurred has been on the 2006 and 2007 school board's watch. In early 2006, the board majority rescinded the $5.5 million contract we had signed to sell the Grande Avenue site, thus jeopardizing funding for building a student commons at the high school and modernizing Emerson Junior High School.”

In fact, what more likely would have happened is that $5.5 million would have simply vanished into the facilities problems that we discussed last week. However, instead of taking out a COP to pay for King High in 2006, the sale of the Grande would have covered it. It seems fairly clear that the Superintendent and CBO would then have been able to have avoided the discovery of the missing King High money the following year.

Summary and conclusions:

The Davis Enterprise on January 10, 2008 reported that a consensus, at least a conceptual agreement between the School District, the Neighborhood Association, and the City.

“The new school board formed a 7/11 Surplus Property Committee — so named because state law specifies the committee should have between seven and 11 members — that recommended the district sell the property. The money from the sale be used only for school facilities, not salaries.

The committee, along with city and school staff, and members of the Grande Neighborhood Association, reached consensus on a plan that features 39 lots, a workable traffic pattern, and greenbelts flanking the west and north edges of the site.”

Several things have changed with the school district, including unprecedented cooperation between the city of Davis and Davis Joint Unified to ensure that the process benefits both the city and the schools.

One of the common denominators during both King High and Grande under Tahir Ahad and David Murphy, was the lack of communication and the almost combative and adversarial relationship with the city.

It is important to note that the sale of Grande will not alleviate the current fiscal crisis in the school district. The money from any sale could only go to facilities and not to the general fund.

However it is pretty clear from the public record and a cursory examination of the law, that the original Grande Property sale made little fiscal sense and it certainly pushed up against the laws of public meetings and the Education Code.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Hundreds of Da Vinci Students Flood Chambers Hoping to Save Jobs of Their Teachers

One thing just about everyone agreed last night--no one had seen so many students at the Community Chambers. The fire marshal locked the doors to the main chambers. The hallway outside was filled to capacity. They opened the room next door and it was filled. People, almost all of them students, flooded the corridors and the patio. One had to park down the street. It was an amazing site.

Inside was a sad picture. A picture of inevitability. For almost two and a half hours, the Davis Joint Unified School Board went back and forth discussing the possibilities and the probabilities and numbers. Oh those numbers. There just aren't enough of them. Or too many of them, depending on your perspective.

We learned earlier this week that Da Vinci High School faced a possibility of 9 of its 12 teachers being on the layoff list. An occurrence that would obviously decimate the school.

Last night we learned the consequences if the school district did not make over $4 million in cuts. Associate Yolo County Superintendent Linda Legnitto with Superintendent Jorge Ayala looking on, laid out in very stark, very real, and very cold terms exactly what a lack of action by the Davis School Board would mean. It would be that Davis Joint Unified would lose control of its financial affairs. It would prevent the School District from taking on new debt without approval from the voters. It would prevent them from applying or being eligible for various monies. It would in all likelihood lead the County take over most operations. In short, we would lose local control of our schools.

Unfortunately last night, we also learned the consequence of making such deep cuts. There are some 280 students at Da Vinci which has become a magnet for technology and students who are unique. One by one the vast majority of those students flooded the chambers and spoke from their heart. One by one, the cold hard truth sunk in deeper and deeper. This is going to be a devasting loss.

When you think about it, whether it is Da Vinci High cuts, whether it is foreign languages, whether it is music, whether it is programs that aid at-risk kids, the bottom line is that you are cutting programs that for some kids mean the difference between education and not education. Between success and failure. Every kid is different. What inspires a kid varies. What keeps a kid interested and engaged depends on the kid. What makes Davis unique is the variety of programs that it offers to keep students engaged in their education and when those programs are taken away many kids will become at-risk.

The worst part of these cuts are that they are deep, painful, and have the air of inevitability. We cannot merely rail against the County, the Board of Education, the School District, and hope to make things change. We cannot blame the boogie man and demand better. There is no bad guy here. There are mistakes to be sure. But the board in this case is doing what it has to do. And that's the worst part about it. It is a helpless feeling. The worst thing in the world was watching those kids sitting in the audience and you could literally see their hearts ripped out of them and you knew there was literally nothing that you could do to stop it.

That said, all is not completely lost. As the board emphasized, by March 15, 2008 they were required to lay out these cuts--send out the layout notices and show the county that they had over $4 million, it is closer to $4.3 million in cuts.

However, things can go back some now that this has occurred. The budget will take a long time to hash out, Ms. Legnitto suggested not until at least the summer would we know, but there is a good chance that the state cuts will not be as steep.

In the meantime, the Davis Schools Foundations has already raised over $15,000 and their goal is to raise $2.8 million. They are sponsoring a "Dollar a Day" fundraising campaign, which for laymen would be $365 donations (or perhaps $366 since it is leap year). For more information people are encourage to go to their website at http://www.davisschoolsfoundation.org.

Should their efforts to raise $2.8 million be successful, it could help bridge the gap. The problem of course is that this too is just one-time money. And the budget picture for next year is not figuring to be any better, in fact, there might need to be another $600,000 in cuts.

There was talk of another parcel tax. But the deadline for June is today. So that would obviously be out of the question. That puts November as a possibility. But would the voters approve another parcel tax just a year after they renewed the last one? That seems like a lot to ask the voters. We are probably talking about another $100 per year to cover everything. It is tough to imagine. Then again, it is tough to imagine $4 million in cuts.

There is no doubt that yesterday was the low point among low points for many in this community and on that board. Gina Daleiden, who called in from Los Angeles from her visit to the Museum of Tolerance emphasized how difficult a call this was and that this was not what she came to the board to do.

One has to sympathize with our new Superintendent James Hammond, who finds himself thrust in the firing line. Hopefully the coming weeks bring better news, until then, we will have to bunker down and ride out this storm.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Vanguard Investigation Part II: Facilities Finance and Construction Irregularities

This is the second story in our continuing series of examining the tenure of former DJUSD Deputy Superintendent Tahir Ahad and problems that arose out of his establishment of a private education consulting business in 1999—Total Schools Solutions. The first segment of this series which ran on Sunday, February 24, 2008 examined the inherent problems involved in a conflict of interest. The conflict of interest we examined involved a series of disturbing findings of how Mr. Ahad used his position as Chief Budget Officer (CBO) with the Davis Joint Unified School District as a means by which to start up his own private company for his own private gain. In short, he used public resources for private gain, a serious breach in the public trust.

If those specific problems were not serious enough, an extensive investigation by the Vanguard has found a series of questionable decisions and critical mistakes by Tahir Ahad and his staff, especially with regards to facilities planning. During the course of this second segment, we shall examine problems that arose with the construction of Montgomery Elementary School, Mace Ranch Elementary, which eventually became Korematsu, and King High.

Due to the length of this discussion, the next segment of this series will cover the Grande Property, and also examine the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistant Team (FCMAT) report and how the implications of a budget deficit was created by the use of one-time monies to fund ongoing projects.

One key point that needs to be made at the onset is that the district brought in FCMAT. They also brought in a consultant, Terri Ryland who reconstructed the district’s books that were in disarray following Tahir Ahad’s 2006 exit from the district. The key point however, as Board President Sheila Allen emphasized, “there was no lost money, there was no money that was illegally spent, but it was very difficult for someone to come in and be able to track exactly—here’s the money coming in, here’s how it was spent.” The other key point that will be demonstrated much more thoroughly in a future segment of this story is that many of the problems that FCMAT found with the district’s books have been thoroughly examined by the school district and new CBO Bruce Colby and the district has fixed many if not all of these problems.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that no monies appear to be missing, what the Vanguard has uncovered amounts to serious fiscal mismanagement. Money may not have been lost, but these practices undoubtedly cost the district much in terms of inefficiency, time, energy, and the expense of repairing the damage caused by Mr. Ahad’s business practices. The FCMAT report rated the district a “high risk,” a score that will be explained during the course of this report.

Background

In 1998, the district attempted but failed to pass a facilities bond with the voters. Complaints ranged from the fact that the bond was too high to the fact that it covered too many schools and facilities. So in 2000, the school district placed a $26 million school facilities bond before the Davis voters. Included in this bond was $32 million in matching funds from the state. Measure K sought to alleviate overcrowding by building a new junior high school and two new elementary schools—one in South Davis and one in Mace Ranch.

The paired down ballot measure passed easily with 85 percent of the vote. However, in it contained the seeds that would cause almost a decade worth of problems for the Davis Joint Unified School District as well as many in the community.

The first problem was the decision to include Mace Ranch Elementary School in the bond measure. There were strong political reasons for its inclusion including a Mello Roos levied on the residents of Mace Ranch and the political need to include it in order to insure passage of the bond measure. But there were warning signs as well including a 1996 Future Facilities Task Force Report that suggested that future enrollment might only support an additional 1.5 schools rather than two full-two schools. Unfortunately, that projection has played out to present, where the Best Uses of Schools Task Force report basically found the same thing—the district does not have significant attendance to sustain a ninth elementary school. This is just a side note however; even now it is difficult to ascertain whether the decision to build two new schools was a clear mistake without 20-20 hindsight.

The larger problem however was the reliance of $32 million in state matching funds. The tenuous nature of such reliance was underscored just a little over a month after the passage of Measure K when the Davis Enterprise ran a December 19, 2000, article that questioned what a State Allocation Board decision to reserve a large amount of money in matching funds for Los Angeles might mean for Davis. This put into question whether Davis would receive their allotment of matching funds.

Ironically enough, Tahir Ahad was quoted in the article as saying:

"I believe it does not reflect positively on the work that districts like Davis have done to make sure we comply with the rules and regulations, and to get our applications in on time."

The problematic nature of depending so heavily on state funding becomes apparent as we examine the problems that underlie the construction of Montgomery Elementary and Mace Ranch Elementary, which would become Korematsu Elementary School.

Montgomery Elementary School

In August of 2001, the Davis School district signed construction contracts to build Montgomery Elementary School. According to the plan, the approximate funding requested for this project was just over $9 million of which the State was requested to fund just over $4.5 million.

According to the state law, the district had 180 days from this date to submit a funding application. However, the district did not file until July of 2002, or 11 months after the contract was signed. This application was “rejected due to the District being non-responsive to Staff’s request for addition information. In addition, the District did not qualify for funding since the construction contracts were signed more than 180 days prior to the District’s submittal.”

A key point needs to be made clear at this time—it was not clear that the District knew that it had missed the deadline. However, the application submitted was missing required information and the district failed to respond to requests for additional information.

While the facilities plan in general fell under Tahir Ahad’s auspices, the specific employee in charge of the application was Henry Petrino, the Facilities Director who also worked on the side for Total School Solutions. The readers should be reminded that Henry Petrino left the school district to work full time for Total School Solutions but was hired back as a consultant by Tahir Ahad (as was discussed in the previous segment).

By January of 2003, the school construction was completed. The district then submitted funding application for a second time. The application was rejected once again since the contracts were signed more than 180 days prior to the District’s submittal. The deadline was missed not by a short period of time either; it was missed by a full five months.

The Davis School District was not alone in missing the deadline however.

As Marty West and Joan Sallee wrote in defense of the district administration at the time, in their November 2007 Op-Ed:

“Much has been made of the district's ultimate success in August 2007 in obtaining $4.5 million from the state for the 2001-02 construction costs of Marguerite Montgomery Elementary School. We are also delighted at this successful result of many years of work by many people. When we learned in 2003 that a new regulation jeopardized our application for state construction funds, we supported the superintendent in his immediate efforts to secure the funds. More than 70 other school districts had run afoul of the same obscure regulation.”

In point of fact there were problems with the regulations; however, that really does not excuse missing deadlines. A simple call could have clarified any deadlines for matching fund allocations. Many familiar with such processes told the Vanguard that it would be the first thing we find out, because almost all applications have deadlines. One would ordinarily build a calendar to ensure compliance with any and all regulations. This did not occur with the school district in the case of Montgomery.

The Vanguard asked Board President Sheila Allen about the chief problem involved in losing the state matching funds during the course of her interview in January.

“The chief problem for why we lost the state matching funds was because we missed the deadline. To me, that’s inexcusable to just miss it. For something as huge as this, I don’t know what else that you’re doing, but something so very important as this, you just don’t miss the deadline. That’s the reason that the whole thing started is that you missed the deadline. And there can be speculation as to why one would have missed the deadline, but the bottom line is that the deadline was missed. I don’t think there was a sufficient consequence for such a large mistake as that.”

The bottom line however following the denial of funds is that the district was short of $4.5 million that was being counted upon to fund Montgomery. Worse yet is the fact that the construction was already completed before matching funds were secured. So what did the school district do? Did they issue a mea culpa and ask for more funding? No, they did not. They began a process whereby funding for other projects got shifted to Montgomery. However, the lost money from Montgomery was magnified by subsequent problems with the funding from Mace Ranch Elementary School—soon to be called, Korematsu. Before we discuss Korematsu, we will discuss the recouping of the Montgomery money, which took place just last summer.

“Winning the Lottery”—Recouping the Montgomery Money

Following the second denial in April of 2003, the Governor placed a freeze on all regulations until May of 2004. Upon the lifting of the freeze, regulations for a 120-day grandfathering filing period were approved by the State Allocation Board (SAB) on an emergency basis. The district in November of 2004 submitted a 3rd application and this application was rejected since the District did not have eligibility for the project during the grandfathering period.

The problem was that by 2004, the district was experiencing declining enrollment and no longer eligible for matching funds by the state. It would take until the summer of 2007 until the district, with great effort on the part of staff and community, would secure this matching funding upon appeal.

Assemblywoman Lois Wolk told the SAB:

“It’s true that there have been numerous mistakes made on this application dating from the early year 2000 when the bond was passed and after that 2002 and onward… Many of these issues resulted in a new school board, a new school, a new chief budget officer, and a new superintendent. Heads have rolled indeed. But if the district is not granted this appeal, it is not those individuals frankly who were responsible for the errors who will pay but rather the Davis students.”

Former Assemblywoman and current County Supervisor Helen Thomson also apologized to the SAB for what she described as “very highhanded and arrogant” treatment by former employees of the district. She too emphasized personnel change in the form of a new superintendent and new business manager.

A thorough reading of the minutes from the SAB suggests that while the district did in fact recoup the $4.5 million in matching funds, it took tremendous effort and in many ways it was a decision made not on merits of the case as West and Sallee describe, but rather on mercy by the SAB. They certainly were well within their rights to follow the staff recommendation of rejecting the appeal.

Board Vice President Gina Daleiden told the Vanguard it was a combination of the efforts of Lois Wolk and Helen Thomson along with changes made by the school board that led to the reinstatement of the funding.

“We had a huge helping hand from our widely respected representatives, Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, Supervisor Helen Thomson, and Senator Mike Machado who all went in and made the statements that you can find reflected in the transcript. But basically it is my belief that the State Allocation Board, in that second meeting, understood that the district had made changes to correct past problems and mistakes, had acted responsibly, and had understood that our students would be the ones that would be most hurt by the denial. And our interim Superintendent listed several changes that had been made in the district that he helped make, and that our new CBO had made in our financial practices, so I believed sitting there in the audience, that the state allocation board understood that we corrected a lot of past mistakes and they were willing to give us the funding.”

The Davis School Board led by Jim Provenza worked very hard to make key changes that would enable the SAB to consider overturning the rejection on appeal. Senator Bob Margett, a Republican was a key player in the appeal process. He would not have been willing to overturn the decision had the district not worked hard to clean up their business office beginning with CBO Tahir Ahad, the replacement of David Murphy with Richard Whitmore as Superintendent, the hiring of Bruce Colby as the new CBO, and an implementation of the changes requested by FCMAT.

The Davis Enterprise quotes Keltie Jones praising Jim Provenza’s leadership and expertise on this matter.

School board trustee Keltie Jones credited Provenza, an attorney with the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office in Sacramento.

"We benefited from your expertise in the state Capitol," she said.

Board Member Sheila Allen generously praised the efforts of all involved.

“I have to take another opportunity, because I don’t know if they get a lot of positive press in your blog or not, but Mike Machado and especially Helen Thomson and Lois Wolk, not only came to the meeting and spoke for us, but they were doing political assisting behind the scenes and people were going out of the room and there were phone calls happening at the dais while people were doing their presentations. It passed with more votes than we actually needed. I felt like I won the lottery that day.”

Korematsu

As was the case with Montgomery, the district had budgeted roughly $9 million for the construction for Korematsu. Roughly $4.5 million of that was supposed to be financed by state matching funds. Instead, the district received only $2.476 million or roughly $2 million less than originally planned.

According to Board Vice President Gina Daleiden:

“When we filed for state funds enrollment was at one level and at the time the funding came in we had declined in enrollment so we actually received fewer dollars for Korematsu.”

Local funds had to make up the difference between the $2.4 million in state money obtained and the amount originally planned. Clearly, this is the fault of no one. However, it does illustrate once again the pitfalls of relying on state money as a necessary funding source. Due to the shortfalls and lost revenue, the district between these two projects was around $6.5 million in the hole as compared to the amount that was originally budgeted for the two elementary school projects.

Mismanagement however comes into play here as well. The project bid went to NTD Edge as a “sole source designed build” in which exactly one company was consulted.

The contract itself was very “unusual.” It was a “design-build lease-back contract.” The site would be actually leased to the contractor for $1 per year. According to the minutes from the September 18, 2003 board meeting:

“The design-build lease-back would allow the contractor to negotiate the price with the subcontractors of their choice, reducing cost and ensuring quality workmanship.”

The board would be informed that this arrangement would be “expected to see reduced architectural cost and reduced change order costs with this type of approach.”

This would turn out to be largely untrue.

Moreover, the minutes note, “Deputy Superintendent Ahad noted that the district qualified for funding for this project, but the funding is not released until a construction contract is awarded. There is a possibility the money would not be available, although the district already qualified.” Further Mr. Ahad “indicated that eventually the money would be released, but in the meantime the district would have a cash flow issue. The board member noted that was a concern.” A board member, believed to be Don Saylor, although not identified in the article, “noted that was a concern.” And in fact, the district received less than they expected from the state for this construction.

Further problems resulted from the structure of this contract. The board was told that they needed to adopt this contract the evening of September 18, 2003 or the contract opportunity would disappear.

In fact written into the contract were timelines and deadlines for the district to deal with issues such as the burrowing owl habitat within a timeframe that was largely infeasible. This led the contract to not be executed. As a result, the cost of materials went up and costs increased by at least $600,000 on the project.

Questions persist to this date about the nature of this contract and the reason for a single-bid award rather than an open bidding process.

King High

The fiscal practices of the district and the loss in revenues would catch up to the district and Tahir Ahad with the construction of King High. As we would learn in November of 2006, funding was just the tip of the iceberg. There was a fundamental lack of communication between the school district and the city of Davis. Davis City Manager Bill Emlen came before the board to report on several problems that developed.

The three largest were construction crews severing the root structure of trees on B Street that had been at the center of controversy. Suddenly a huge logistical problem conveniently resolved itself. Second, because the district did not consult with the city before proceeding, there was a discovery of a storm drain that ran underneath the King High structure. Finally, the footprint of King High intruded onto city property.

While Emlen was at this meeting, the board learned that the district needed an additional $5 million in COPs (Certificate of Participation) in order to be able to afford to complete the King High construction project. The revelation that the district only had enough money to complete half of the King High project put an immediate halt to the prior conversations and eventually a halt to the King High project itself until the district and school board could figure out what had happened with now nearly $10 million in facilities money.

In order to trace the timeline more accurately, we go back in time to August 18, 2005. It was this meeting prior to the election of Gina Daleiden, Tim Taylor, and Sheila Allen, that set the stage for what would happen.

At that point, Tahir Ahad was coming before the board for approval of a $10 million COP.

Tahir Ahad stated:

“These items are brought to you to implement the action plan which you briefly talked about on June 9 [2005] to raise money for the construction of King High School and to pay for some other projects in the master plan.”

Board Member Joan Sallee would then ask Mr. Ahad:

“And the reason we are doing this is to give us additional money because we have not enough left in the facilities bond. We’ve fulfilled our requirements, we’ve fulfilled our responsibilities to the community, but we want to go on and work on King High School and some other projects that deserve funding but were not included in that original facilities bond.”

Tahir Ahad responded:

“Yes, you are right Joan.”

Later in the discussion, Board Member Jim Provenza expresses his support for this plan:

“It would be a benefit to the students of the district to get started on those projects a little earlier.”

Keltie Jones follows by saying:

“Particularly for me, the key factor is that this is supporting the reconstruction of King High which I think is long overdue and that the students shouldn’t feel they’re second class and not included in all the upgrades that everyone else gets in the district.”

This sequence is vitally important because it establishes that Tahir Ahad as well as three board members at that meeting acknowledged and clearly understood that they were voting to authorize debt to be taken out to finance the construction of King High and other projects.

November 2, 2006, just over a year later Superintendent David Murphy, with Tahir Ahad now gone, was already talking about taking out another COP for $5 million to fund King High School.

Gina Daleiden forcefully spoke to this:

“We learned just a few minutes ago that more than fifty percent of the [King High] project is unpaid unless we make a decision about COPs. That is news to me.”

On the videotape of that meeting, you can hear both Jim Provenza and Sheila Allen stating their agreement with Gina about this.

David Murphy however tried to reassure the school board that all the money was in place; however, they just did not have the documentation. How he could make such an assertion prior to the audit was unclear.

“I’m sure we have all the money that we think we have, but the documentation provided to the FCMAT team was deficient… I’m confident that not only do we have the money that we believe we have, but the documentation will show that.”

The Superintendent then uses the fact that the top two DJUSD administrators in charge of business services were not there as a reason for not knowing what happened with $10 million.

Former Board Member B.J. Kline came before the board during public comment to make a strong statement.

“When we approved back in September or October last year I believe what it was when we did King High, we were told we were fully funded. We had the money in the facilities master plan, because we got the COPS, we had the money, I signed it, my name is on it. So I’m disturbed that we might not have half the money to build this school. And we made a commitment to that community to give them their school… This is one of the questions we asked during the discussion. Are we done with this? Can we move ahead with no problems? And we were assured that there would be no problems… The financing, there’s no excuse for that, absolutely, 100% no excuse… I’m a little bit, I’ll use the word, it’s pretty heavy, disgusted tonight.”

Board member Daleiden expressed her discomfort for going ahead with the project without secured funding:

“The deal is that ultimately this board is responsible for the finances of the school district… So all of this clean up work essentially eventually falls on our shoulders. I am feeling very uncomfortable and a little nervous… I’m worried about causing more problems for our system than we already have. The problems seem to be a little deep. As I sit here today, I don’t know and that’s part of the problem.”

In their November 2007 Op-Ed, Marty West and Joan Sallee blame the school board for creating this mess and suggest that stopping the construction of King High was costly to the district.

“The construction of a new King High School was on track. Funding had not been finalized, pending the completion of other facilities projects, but we knew sufficient funds would be available. The superintendent told the current board in August 2006 that additional borrowing would be needed, secured by future receipts from existing bonds measures.

In November 2006, the board majority, trying to create an impression of financial mismanagement, put King High construction on hold, causing unnecessary delays and costing an extra $175,000. In early 2007, the budget officer reassured the board that the construction money was, in fact, available. King High is now ready to open.”

The fact that this seemed to catch all five board members off-guard (and indeed even former board member B.J. Kline), the fact that no one could account for what happened with the $10 million surely suggests that the board majority (in fact, a unanimous board) did the right thing by stopping construction and figuring out what happened with the money.

The question quickly became: What happened with the money, and was it lost? The school board would take the lead to answer that question bringing in Terri Ryland, a consult, to examine the books. The board majority made up of four members heavily pursued the answers to what had happened with the King High money.

Their efforts led to an inquiry by Terri Ryland and FCMAT that got to the bottom of the story.

On December 7, 2006, Superintendent David Murphy gave what amounted to an apology to the school board.

“The project was approved by the board on August 17. However, on November 2, it was quite clear that the district’s procedures and the staff’s work by which we’ve kept the board updated and clearly involved in a timely way to understand changes by which to fund this project were very inadequate.

On November 2, it was clear that five board members were surprised to learn that the complete funding of the financing project had not already been approved by a board decision and would be dependent on a current or a future board decision. During the November 2 board meeting, staff indicated a second certificate of participation [COP] would be needed at that time to be issued in the future in order to complete the funding of this budget and that was not expected by this board.

Although that COP would be repaid by CFD revenues, the fact is the board was quite surprised by that need and believed the King High School had already had a formal board approved financing plan. I had not realized the board would be surprised, but the fact is all five board members were. We’d like to and should acknowledge where we see those things occurring, and then we should say what we should do as a consequence of looking at those facts clearly, publicly, and that’s what we’re doing. No one wants such surprises, I don’t want them, the board doesn’t want them, nobody wants them. They’re not done by deliberate intent but they sometimes occur.”

The district hired a consultant, Terri Ryland to figure out what had happened with the $10 million ahead of the FCMAT report that would be coming out later on and we will discuss at length in the next segment.

The answer of course you probably already suspect, the District under David Murphy and Tahir Ahad’s leadership took the money that was a shortfall for Montgomery and Korematsu and took it from the money that was supposed to go to King High.

As Gina Daleiden stated at the meeting:

“Essentially it’s telling us that the bulk of that COP money went to Korematsu… It looks like about $7 million dollars went to Korematsu… That would be a little bit of a new surprise for me. I mean I’m pretty surprised because that was not a discussion that I ever heard that the COP money was for Korematsu.”

So money that was supposed to go for King High instead went to pay for Korematsu. And money that was supposed to go to Korematsu went to pay for Montgomery. How could the board not know this?

Because the state matching money from Montgomery was actually reflected in the district’s flow sheets for several years even though the money had not been received—and so the board members were led to believe that the money was there.

Here was the key discussion during the December 7, 2006 board meeting when this was disclosed:

Ryland: “There was a time yes, when you did, and in fact, there was a receivable on your books as late as the 05-06 year anticipating the receipt of that money… So there was a time when it was part of the plan and it was anticipated that it would be spent on the projects at that time.”

Provenza: “At what point did it go off…”

Ryland: “It was reversed just this last fiscal year, at the end of the 05-06 year, negative five million dollar adjustment to state apportionment was made.”

Murphy: “In the district’s tracking documents that I looked at, that change occurred sometime before May of ’06.”

Gina: “So for two years it looked like the money was there when in reality we had not obtained it.”

Provenza: It wasn’t in our flow sheets but it was still being relied on… It was not in the flow sheets.” “We weren’t aware of the Montgomery money being relied on. But it was in fact being relied on.” “I think the problem is that the board was not properly informed that that money was still being relied on. That’s one of the reasons that we thought that the money was there for King… What I’m hearing is that the Montgomery money was being relied upon to pay for these projects, it was not in our cashflow reports, so that we did not know that.”

Ryland: “It was on the books as a receivable until the end of the year.”

Provenza: “But we don’t see the books as the board, we just see the cashflow report.”

Ryland: “Right, exactly. That’s one of the key points by FCMAT, and would be one of my key points as well is that if that reconciliation had been occurring, between the facilities department and the finance department regularly. ”

Gina Daleiden in her interview with the Vanguard sums up what happened as what was reported in Terri Ryland’s report.

“Basically here comes Montgomery, they’re short the money because they missed the filing deadlines, so now Montgomery is drawing more local funds than were anticipated. Here comes Korematsu, that’s budgeted for a certain amount, enrollment declines… Korematsu gets fewer dollars from the state, so now Korematsu is drawing on more of the local funds, and at some point this $10 million gets dumped into the same fund and now it’s all rolling together so it’s covering whatever was being pulled out before, also modernization projects are in that same funding… Basically King was the last project in, in that course, and the first one to run out of money.”

The problem is that the board was not apprised of what was going on. Part of this is that anticipated funds were included on line items as though they were actual funds. Compounding this problem was the fact that these funds were also not yet board approved.

Gina Daleiden in her interview with the Vanguard cited the FCMAT report (available on the district webpage on the right hand column) page 95:

“There was funding that was not yet board approved that was on a line that was called “redevelopment agency” funds, and that is actually in the FCMAT report, page 95, “since the issuance of FCMAT’s initial draft report, the district has disclosed that the $3 million was entered on the wrong line and instead should have reflected a new COP issuance,” which would have been financing, “with a second $3 million to be requested in 2007. Since neither amount had been approved by the board, it is not appropriate to reflect that as cash flow unless clearly noted as potential cash. The current practice of listing the amounts without such a notation must be discontinued. The district should insure that all revenue projections are realistic and based on likely funding.”

Why this money was placed under the label, “redevelopment agency funds” is not clear. The district staff under David Murphy claims this was an error. Regardless, it led the board to believe money was actually there when in fact it was only “anticipated.”

Summary and Conclusions

To summarize this segment, we can look at the problems with the district’s facilities planning as twofold. There was an initial mistake made in the filing for the Montgomery matching plan. Board member Sheila Allen calls this mistake in itself as “inexcusable.” And that is clearly accurate; you simply cannot miss out on substantial funds because of missed deadlines. That is why you hire professional staff and why you cannot have that staff preoccupied with other projects such as his work at Total School Solutions as Henry Petrino was involved with at the time.

The second problem, is instead of issuing forth a mea culpa, they took what appears to be steps to downplay and minimize their mistake. They shuffled monies around and then asked for additional funding under false premises. How many of these errors were errors rather than concerted efforts at cover up are unclear.

The district under Tahir Ahad and David Murphy assumed all along that they would get the money from Montgomery and that all would fall into place. However, based on what we know, this is incorrect. The SAB never would have granted the appeal and overturned the decision, had the district not made changes to their personnel. The board was mislead into thinking that they had money for project that they did not have. Tahir Ahad and David Murphy were not necessarily covering up the lost money—since the board knew that they had lost this money, but rather covered up the impact of the loss of the Montgomery money.

The board was shown line items that indicated that they had money that was not there. Money that they were told would go to pay for King High, instead went to cover for the lost Montgomery money.

The end result is that the district did not “lose” any money according to the best audit reports from both Terri Ryland and FCMAT. On the other hand, the district never performed a Forensic Audit of their accounts. The audits by FCMAT and Terri Ryland simply aimed at ascertaining where the money went and tracking it. A forensic audit would look to examine as to whether any malfeasance occurred.

Regardless of this point, as we shall discover in much greater detail when we examine the FCMAT report more thoroughly in the next installment, is that the district was at best sloppy with its money. That in and of itself, is a cause for concern. The amount of time spent dealing with these issues was prohibitive. Terri Ryland was hired at great expense to put books together for over 100 hours. The staff and consultant time in recouping the Montgomery money was considerable. The amount of money spent trying to fix King High design and construction problems and figure out the finances was considerable as well.

All of this results from a simple fact that deadlines for funding applications were missed and the need to somehow, some way, conceal the gravity of the situation from the board of education elected by the Davis voters.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting