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Thursday, May 17, 2012
Regional Focus: August 2008
Learning How to Cope
Budget woes hit schools in Elk Grove, once one of the fastest-growing communities in the nation
Story by Dan Darvishian
The fight seems to get rougher every year. And every year California’s educators gird for battle as the governor proposes a budget that inevitably endangers their finances. But in Sacramento County, things are getting worse.
Not only did Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s original proposal abandon minimum funding rules and slash $4.8 billion from K-12 spending, but student attendance in some local districts is dipping. That could mean a further cut in funds, just when the money is needed most.
Consider Elk Grove Unified School District, which is projecting a loss of some 500 pupils next year. Because districts receive average daily attendance funds, the shortfall could add up to millions of dollars.
“That is ... causally related to the decline in the economy,” says Superintendent Steven M. Ladd. And it would mark the first attendance retreat in the district’s 49-year history. Over the past decade, the district built more than 20 new schools. Today the district, which encompasses some 320 square miles, serves more than 61,000 students at 62 schools. It has a budget of more than $700 million, says spokeswoman Elizabeth Graswich.
Elk Grove also has a remarkable scholastic record. Among the first districts to embrace class-size reduction, its students routinely score above state and county academic achievement averages. Last year some 95 percent of the district’s seniors passed the California High School Exit Exam. And the district has been making inroads into the “teacher-spending gap” affecting minority students and those in poverty statewide, according to The Education Trust-West, a national academic policy organization.
But economic woes — including an estimated $17 billion state budget deficit for fiscal 2008-2009, the subprime lending meltdown, soaring fuel prices and unemployment — have led to diminishing prospects in the district.
After a yearlong drift, job growth in the Capital Region remained flat in April, according to the Sacramento Regional Research Institute. The group recently reported that job losses in the housing-related and trade, transportation and utilities sectors, combined with other factors, have led to the lowest regional job-growth rate in more than a decade; indeed, concludes SRRI, the region has the weakest such position in the nation.
Attempting balance atop the state’s creaking economic base, the Elk Grove district announced that it would not be opening Elizabeth Pinkerton Middle School, which has already been built. The plan, says Superintendent Ladd, is to keep the campus in ready reserve until times improve. “People aren’t buying the houses; we’re not getting the growth,” Ladd says. Planning for the school took place long “before the bottom dropped out” of the economy.
Most critically, based on the governor’s first proposed budget, the district would have lost some $50 million over two years and had to tap its reserves for $12.8 million. Faced with such figures, Elk Grove proposed increasing kindergarten and 9th-grade class sizes and cutting summer school, instructional coaching, professional learning and textbook funding, among others.
While the governor would eventually restore funding, and even add to it, school administrators statewide remain confounded. The budget would not cover healthcare costs, let alone bus fuel. All this, they note, as California is ranked No. 46 in the nation for per pupil spending.
In Elk Grove, parental protest caused Ladd and his seven-member board to reconsider the kindergarten decision. But with a mandate to form its own budget by July 1, the district was compelled to make some painful decisions.
Now, for the first time in a generation, teachers were on the block. But first up were the district’s “classified personnel,” staff dedicated to such programs as professional development in science content for teachers. Largely grant funded, however, the positions may be re-established through applications.
The hardest part was handing out final notices for 81 teaching positions. Union President Tom Gardner of the Elk Grove Education Association is hopeful that many of the jobs will be restored by next fall. The district, he feels, was probably a bit overzealous.“We think it’s bad, and yet we think it’s not as bad as it was,” says Gardner.
There may be room, suggests superintendent Ladd, but he remains guarded. “People who use crystal balls,” he says, “eventually dine on crushed glass.”
The EDC also plans to use its new website, elkgroveedc.org, as a marketing tool. “These days, a lot of people looking for new business locations are using the Internet,” he says. “It’s the No. 1 tool for economic development. It’s absolutely critical to get your message out there for people to see at any time.”
Business expansion and retention is still a work in progress. In recent months, there’s been less-than-stellar news, with companies such as Apple eliminating 174 jobs from its Elk Grove site in May, and AAA of Northern California announcing it will close its 500-employee call center in the city by 2011. And empty retail spaces — such as one formerly occupied by Islands restaurant on Laguna Boulevard, which closed in March — are starting to pop up in numerous shopping centers.
But not to worry, says James Sweeney, senior partner at Sweeney & Greene LLP in Elk Grove and the EDC’s corporate secretary. “Things are cyclical,” he says. “You have better times, and you have slow times. Right now, things are not as bad as they appear.”
And that’s one of the challenges facing the EDC: getting the public to realize it’s not all gloom and doom in Elk Grove. “It’s true the real estate market has fallen flat,” Czarnecki says, “yet we actually had 2.5 percent growth here in the past year. Credit that to a city government that’s doing everything it can to be business friendly.”
Those efforts include a fee-deferral program, intended to encourage new and existing business to invest in new real estate, according to Rodriguez.
It’s also true that not all business in Elk Grove is suffering, according to Williams. He notes that his Smog ’N Go sales are on a pace to jump from $2.5 million in 2007 to $4 million this year. “You hear a lot about the companies that are struggling, but many of us are doing fine,” Williams says. “If word of that gets out, it can only help draw new business here. When they sit down with the chamber, city and EDC, and they ask if it makes sense for them to come here, the answer can only be yes.”
There’s also a need to convince investors that it is not all that expensive to do business in Elk Grove. “We now have a quality of life here that can’t be ignored. We have major retailers coming [in the form of Elk Grove Promenade and surrounding construction]. We have excellent schools. We’re in a good location geographically. We have a very skilled work force that can be utilized when the businesses come here. And we have existing structures or shovel-ready sites for them to build on. We have it all.”
So can the city still meet its goal of 1,500 new high-paying jobs by 2012 — a number that could expand to more than 4,000 when support jobs are added in?
“It’s not an unrealistic goal,” Sweeney says. “We’re [six] months along into this plan, and we’re coming out of a tough 18 months. Steve [Czarnecki] is doing a terrific job trying to recruit local businesses in a challenging environment. I see no reason we can’t attract those 1,500 jobs, or more, in the next five years.”
New Elk Grove Mayor Gary Davis more than agrees. In a recent State of the City address, Davis, who is also on EDC’s board of directors, said the city should set the bar high for new jobs. “I have a vision that includes 50,000 new, high-quality jobs right here in Elk Grove,” he said in March. “It’s a mission I’m thrilled we can share.”
