‘Armageddon’ Looms Without Steep Cuts, Ramona School Board Is Warned

Ramona teachers must choose from a menu of concessions—with one being an immediate 13 percent pay cut—for the district to avoid the “Armageddon” of state takeover, the school board signaled Thursday night.

By 5-0 votes, the board approved new 2012-13 contract proposals for unions representing classified and certificated staffs of the Ramona Unified School District. It also approved a fiscal 2012 budget.

Schools Superintendent Robert Graeff said the goal is to achieve annual savings of $2.73 million from teachers and a smaller amount from support staff such as janitors and food-service workers.

“In the past, [the unions] have not been very creative in how to get to the dollar amount [of savings],” Graeff said after the meeting adjourned at 10:30 p.m. “We’re giving them choices.”

Other options include requiring teachers to help pay for health insurance benefits for the first time and boosting class sizes from the current 30-student average.

But Donna Braye-Romero and Jim King, presidents of the Ramona Teachers Association and the local California School Employees Association chapter, respectively, slammed the new proposals as “regressive bargaining” and a “clear unfair labor practice.”

The CSEA was told its options include a 12 percent pay cut—which King labeled “absolutely outrageous.”

King noted the district’s efforts to combat bullying with student training.

“CSEA feels like you and the board need to take that training,” he said.  “Classified employees are tired of being bullied. … The negotiation process is give and take—not just take.”

Dave Patterson, a 22-year Ramona resident, joined 120 people packing the Wilson Administrative Center board room, most of them wearing the dark-blue shirts of the teachers union.

He said Graeff is paid more “than the governor of this great state” and declared: “We do not pay taxes so certain administrators can drive Mercedes.”

He called for year-round school and “big cuts” in administration to solve what he called “the current fiscal train wreck.”

Braye-Romero and other RTA leaders contend that the district is exaggerating the fiscal crisis to achieve concessions.

But board members defended Dave Ostermann, assistant superintendent in charge of finance, and asked his counterpart with the San Diego County Office of Education whether Ostermann’s work was solid.

Lora Duzyk of the county education office told the board: “We’ve seen no anomaly in your budget or any indication you’re doing anything different than anyone else.”

School board member Rodger Dohm said of Ostermann: “He’s doing exactly what he’s being requested to do” by county and state agencies.

Graeff and others asked Duzyk what might lead to a state takeover—and what would happen.

She said the district, if it needed a state loan to pay its bills, would require legislation in Sacramento that would lead to the state Department of Education appointing an administrator who could fire staff and reduce the school board to mere advisers.

“This is like Armageddon,” Duzyk said—and rarely done. “The board would no longer be a decision-making body.” The outside administrator’s sole focus would be restoring the 10-school district to fiscal solvency, she said.

That could include rolling back salaries and benefits and closing schools, she said—although it couldn’t include “abrogating an existing agreement” with labor unions.

Said board member Bob Stoody: “That would be more like a dictatorship.”

Board President Dan Lopez said he agreed with half of what the union leaders said about the latest district proposal being unfair and unreasonable.

He said the district is being unreasonable now because for 3 1/2 to 4 years the district has been overly fair with the unions—by not demanding concessions.

“This fair piece eats at me,” Lopez said, “because I think we’ve been fair.”  But he said the district can’t get that time back.

“We’ve always been fearful that we’d be in the place that we’re in,” he said.

That place was described in detail by Ostermann in his budget report, which described a “structural deficit” that would lead to shortfalls of $1.35 million at the end of 2012-13, $8.74 million in 2013-14 and a whopping $18.5 million in 2014-15.

Only through internal borrowing—transferring money between district accounts—will Ramona Unified be able to meet its payroll on June 30, 2012, he said.

But with current projections, the district won’t have enough cash to meet obligations on June 30, 2013, he told the board.

He said at its current rate of spending, “Ramona Unified is, at most, 12 months away from a negative certification”—meaning the state says the district can’t pay its bills.

“Concessions from employees is clearly the only way out” of the crisis, Ostermann said in a PowerPoint presentation. (See attached PDF.)

Moreover, said board leader Lopez, “I don’t have any faith that [the governor’s November tax-increase] initiatives will help us more than one year.”

Braye-Romero, the teachers union leader, wasn’t sure whether her union would resume negotiations next week—ahead of a July 1 start of the fiscal year.

But Superintendent Graeff said bargaining dates of June 12 and June 19 were agreed to earlier.  He also noted that school district administrators—including principals—are willing to take a 12 percent compensation cut themselves, but preferably in benefits rather than salary.

He said: “It’s clearly best for the employees to settle quickly,” since dragging out talks could lead to the necessity of higher pay cuts later on—a 24 percent cut, for example, if it took six months to reach agreement.

The Ramona school board has never taken a salary, Graeff and others noted Thursday night.

Lopez said he recently took part in a webinar that gave him a good perspective on the district.

“I’m very proud of the work that we do and the team that we are,” including the Ramona Teachers Association, he said, and stressed that this is not the district but our district.

“Win, lose or draw,” he said, “we’re all going to be together after this is over.”