How'd We Get Here — The State of Rohnert Park-Cotati Schools

Four schools have closed over the last three years. Twenty-eight teachers received pink slips last week. Class sizes have swelled, the school year shortened. And, last week, Superintendent Barbara Vrankovich said she was mailing out 683 interdistrict transfer surveys to parents, asking them why they took their kids out of the .

From anyone’s point-of-view, the district is in dire straits. Negotiations between district representatives and the teacher’s union that started in October, this month were halted — impasse was declared. Now, a state takeover looms.

How did this happen? School board trustees, parents and teachers weighed in. Three major problems have contributed to the downfall, they said.

Declining Enrollment

While Vrankovich sent out nearly 700 surveys asking parents why they transferred their children out of the district, it’s important to point out, she said, that some schools have seen an uptick in transfers into the district, such as .

“Yes students are leaving, but parents are also coming in,” she said. 

A 2010-11 school district demographic report indicates that enrollment over the past 10 years peaked in 2001, with 7,836 students. That number dropped to 5,975 for this school year, and projections show a steady decline until 2017 — with 4,926 students district-wide. Next year’s estimates, with inter and intradistrict transfers factored in, show 204 students leaving Rohnert Park and Cotati schools.

The reason? A combination of factors. Some parents say they’re pulling their kids out of the district because student-teacher ratios have grown to 30 or 32-to-one. Susan Adams, who grew up here, is one of them.

“We’re pulling our kid out of school because he needs to be in a smaller class; less than 20 students,” Adams said. “When he was in kindergarten, there were 18 kids in his class. This year, he’s in second grade, and he’s in a class of 32.”

“My child is not going to be successful in a class of 32,” Adams said.

The board recognizes that magnet programs from other cities are pulling kids out of district.

“We don’t have a vision as a district,” said Trustee Marc Orloff. “We’ve been focusing so much on the budget, that we don’t know where we’re going.”

“We have to be able to offer programs others don’t in order to attract students,” Orloff added.

Orloff pointed to Penngrove Elementary School, which offers a year-round curriculum, Windsor Unified School District’s Cali Calmecac Language Academy, a Spanish immersion school and Santa Rosa Charter School for the Arts.

Board President Ed Gilardi said the district has plenty to offer, and that the school board is working on increasing enrollment. He said programs like Tech High, Expeditionary Learning at Lawrence E. Jones and the wood shop program at Rancho Cotate High are a few programs that attract students.

“And we are currently working with a community advisory committee, appointed by the board, to look at how the district operates and what other types of programs the community would like to see,” Gilardi said.

Gilardi said the new YMCA kindergarten opening up at Mountian Shadows next year is another good example of the moves the district is making towards increasing enrollment.

But Barbara Mackenzie, a longtime city activist and politician, said the district needs to more aggressively attract students here to stay afloat.

“Besides all the cuts that need to be made, we need to do things to bring kids in, we can’t just keep cutting. It needs to be more than a magnet program,” Mackenzie said. “We have a lot of talent in the district, and we have resources like KRCB, Sonoma State and Spreckels.”

“We need to develop an arts charter school,” Mackenzie said.

A closer look at the numbers show that some schools attract students here, but the largest amount of students are leaving the most populated school, Rancho.

Next years projections for Evergreen Elementary show 229 students coming in, and 179 leaving; at John Reed, 184 students are expected to transfer in and 228 are leaving; at Marguerite Hahn, 245 are expected to come in, and 75 are transferring out; 247 people are coming in to Monte Vista, 63 are leaving; 76 students are coming in to Thomas Page, 203 are transferring out; at Waldo Rohnert, 143 are coming in, 160 are leaving; at Lawrence E. Jones, three transfers are going out, 79 coming in; at Rancho Cotate High, 367 students are going out, 77 are coming in; at Tech High, no students are leaving, but 203 students are transferring in; at El Camino, 152 students are transferring in and at Phoenix High, 33 students are transferring in.

Some of the district’s problems also stem from the population decline, the housing crisis and loss of interest in Rohnert Park.

Rohnert Park’s population has declined 3 percent in a decade —, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest numbers. Property values have plummeted 51 percent since 2005, according to a report released this month by the Sonoma County Economic Development Board. Unemployment hit 10.3 percent and a home hasn’t been built in more than 10 years.

“The biggest factor has been the housing crises,” Gilardi said. “We’re not getting young, new families.”

“We can’t attract people to the community, we have no control over housing prices and the cost of living in Sonoma County,” said Trustee Karyn Pulley. “One thing we can do is continue to provide programs other districts might not offer, like Expeditionary Learning and Tech High.”

“It’s a real catch-22,” Pulley said. “We don’t have money to create more programs, but we have to create programs to attract more people to come.”

Teacher’s Salaries and Benefits

Vrankovich said while the board continues to to budget excesses such as office supplies, energy costs and secretaries, nothing is going solve the budget problem until the teacher’s union agrees to further cuts to salaries and benefits. The from the proposed $47 million budget.

According to Wade Roach, the district’s chief financial officer, school employees' salaries and benefits next year, before reductions, are $28.6 million of the the district's $33.1 million in expenditures.

“There’s not enough in the budget to cut outside of salaries and benefits,” Roach said. “There has to be reductions.”

“The numbers speak for themselves,” Vrankovich said at last week’s special board meeting. “When 90 percent of the budget is personnel, we have to look there for reductions in order to stay solvent.”

But the teacher’s union vehemently opposes any more cuts.

“When we began negotiations, we knew we were looking at a budget deficit, so in early January, we proposed $1.8 million in temporary reductions to our salaries and pay,” said Stacie McGwier, president of the Rohnert Park Cotati Educator’s Association. “It has been incredibly difficult to seek the cuts on a temporary basis.”

“This is impacting the teachers — our ability to earn a living and further our careers, but more importantly, it’s effecting the students,” McGwier added. “We all want the same thing … to produce educated young people.”

Vrankovich said a deal couldn't be struck, and an impasse was declared on March 4.

“Now a state mediator will step in,” said Denise Calvert, deputy superintendent of the Sonoma County Board of Education. “The mediator will work with both sides.”

“We were willing to continue to negotiate, but we were never going to reach an agreement the way it was going,” said Marianne DeLaMontanya, chair of the teacher’s union bargaining team. “We were willing to increase our class size, against our better judgment. We were willing to acknowledge the crisis with temporary cuts.”

“Negotating is about give and take, but there was only taking; no giving,” DeLaMontanya said. “They basically continued us to ask us to shorten our teaching year, which makes us makes a financial impact on us, and they wanted us to take a five percent salary cut.”

“The situation is bad, there’s no doubt about it,” Pulley said. “Until there are collaborative measures on everybody’s part, we can’t fix this.”

“I think we have to collaborative work with teacher’s union to do whatever we can to avoid a state takeover,” Orloff said.

State Budget Crisis

State funding has significantly been reduced, and it’s largely tied into average daily attendance, Roach said. The first interim report details that 85 percent of the district’s funding comes from state sources, seven percent from federal and eight percent from local leases, permits and donations.

The state gives the district $4,856, but that’s based on 100 percent attendance.

“Even if the student is sick, with an excused absence, it doesn’t matter,” Roach said. “The funding goes down if the student isn’t in the chair.”

A staggering 33 percent of the state’s appropriations are deferred until the 2013-14 school year, according to the December 2010 interim report, the most recent. The second report is expected to be released tonight.

“If you look at the numbers, if the state had given us the funding under Prop. 98, we would have had an extra $6.8 million in revenue,” Roach said. “We would not have this fiscal crisis.”

Editor's note: a school board meeting tonight is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Lawrence E. Jones Middle School.