Spent All The Money...Can We Have More? Or Else The Kids Get Cut See...

The kids are getting jacked up in my old hometown. Big school cuts in west Contra Costa county schools.



RICHMOND - The West Contra Costa school district Monday night voted to eliminate high school athletics, close all its libraries and lay off 10 percent of its employees as part of $16.5 million in budget cuts.



After a meeting that lasted nearly four hours, the school board approved the cuts by a 5-1 vote, with only the high school student representative, Peter Chau, dissenting.



"I refuse to vote of any of these reductions of this list," Chau said. "I can't support something that will destroy the education of my peers."



Good for him. It used to be called the Richmond Unified School District. Oh and it happened before in 91. Back then it was close to $30 mil in debt. They were going to close the schools 2 months early to save money blah blah blah. Former head guy Walter Marks was shown the fast way outta town. see story here



Scandal, waste, nitwits, court order. Check out this part of a paper on education that covers part of what happened to the RUSD back in 91.



In an unprecedented move, the Richmond Unified School District was set to close its schools in 1990 six weeks before the end of the regular school year due to a lack of funds. The Richmond case was particularly important because only a few months before the discovery of a thirty million dollar budget deficit, the district and its superintendent had received national praise and recognition for the implementation of a school choice program. Richmond's school choice plan was widely praised as a model for urban school reform, and the superintendent received national acclaim as a leading 'pioneer in education'. Shortly after the announcement of the budget shortfall, the superintendent, Walter Marks, was fired and left Richmond for a higher paying job in Kansas City, taking with him several top administrators.



As news of the district's fiscal crisis was released, a political battle ensued over who would take the blame and suffer the consequences for the shortage of funds. The local school board came under attack from angry parents who blamed them for failing to adequately monitor the expenditures authorized by the previous superintendent.



In response to a request by the district for a loan to cover the budget deficit, the Governor called for suspension of the collective bargaining agreement with the teachers' union that had been signed only a few months before the shortfall had been discovered and which guaranteed the teachers its first pay increase in several years. In keeping with the partisan nature of state politics, the State Legislature and the Controller refused to authorize the loan to cover the shortfall because they felt the Governor should assume responsibility.



Finally, as the district prepared to shut down operations and close its doors to the thirty thousand students enrolled, Judge Ellen James (Superior Court of Contra Costa County) ruled that the State would have to provide the funds to allow the schools to remain open. She argued that 'The law is clear that the responsibility of the State goes beyond merely providing an equal level of funding to all districts. If the district is unable to carry out the State's mandate to provide public education basically equivalent to the education being provided in the rest of the state, the burden falls back on the State to remedy the situation.'



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