Cascade School District addresses questions

At its Sept. 13 board meeting, the Cascade Union Elementary School District (CUESD) had to field questions from the audience, primarily teachers, about teacher compensation. Rather than address the questions during the meeting, the board followed standard meeting protocol and requested that the questions be submitted in writing to the district office.

When no questions were submitted, the board reconstructed nine questions from their notes and memory and issued a response statement to employees last week.

One of the questions was, “How can the district claim that the Total School Solutions (TSS) analysis was objective and unbiased given that John Almond is on their Board of Directors?”

“John Almond is not on TSS’s board of directors,” Superintendent Wes Smith said.

“A prestigious company like TSS, whose purpose is to conduct and present impartial studies of district’s finances, would not risk damaging their image by falsifying or manipulating numbers for anyone,” said Smith.

CUESD hired Total School Solutions (TSS) to conduct a fiscal health review of all district funds and to identify opportunities to enhance district revenues and to evaluate the efficiency of the allocation of existing resources. Jim Cerreta, director of District Support Services for TSS, and known locally for his business expertise, did the report for the school district.

John Almond, former Cascade Union Elementary School District superintendent, was recently employed part time by TSS as a mentor or leadership coach for California administrators and has no connection with the financial department.

Another question asked was how the board could “justify giving the last three superintendents raises and not the teachers.”

The board said that the last three superintendents “go back about 17 years.” The board also said that, recently, “Dr. Smith was not offered a raise for 2007-2008, was not offered a raise for 2006-2007, nor was he given the $1,000, one-time bonus.” The bonus has been offered to district employees for this current contract, which has not yet been accepted.

A somewhat related question was asked about how the district could say it “respects teachers while giving Dr. Smith a 4.05 percent raise and offering the teachers 0 percent.”

The answer was, “Dr. Smith was not offered and did not get a 4.05 percent raise.”

These and other questions were answered by the school board even though the board was not required to do so by law.

For a complete list of questions and answers given to district employees, call the Cascade Union Elementary School District at 378-7000.