This guest post was written by Susan Keeffe.*

As a long time resident of Hercules, a former West Contra Costa USD student, parent, teacher and administrator, I have been following the recent events regarding educational finances and how it is affecting us locally with increasing concern. How did we reach a point where our teachers refuse to attend a basic fact finding process, an important part of the contract development process? What is happening to California? And more specifically, what is happening to West Contra Costa USD, formerly Richmond Unified School District and before that, Richmond Union School District?

As the country, and California slip further into a very deep recession, much as been written, commented upon, and opined on public pensions. Much has also been written on class size reduction, teacher attitudes, school boards, etc. Let’s put some of this into perspective. The California State Teacher Retirement System (STRS) currently serves approximately 250,000 retirees. The average yearly pension is $48,000. The top 1% (all former school administrators) pensioners earn a little over $100,000. That seems like a lot. How did they do that? All California credentialed staff must pay 8% of their gross salary into the STRS. This is not optional. To earn a good pension, the teachers and school administrators cannot retire prior to age 61 ½. At that time, to maximize the formula that is applied, they must have served for 32 years or more, all that time putting in 8% of their salary. The formula for those individuals is 2.4% of their highest average three years of salary multiplied by their years of service. Those who retire younger, receive a smaller percentage. The earliest age at which an individual can retire in this system is age 55 – few can afford to retire at that age. In California, teachers, speech therapists, school administrators, etc. who also have worked part time jobs or in other settings where they earned Social Security, are subject to the WEP, a federal law which imposes a formula to the STRS pension which effectively reduces it to almost nothing. Teachers whose spouses earned Social Security pensions may not receive the spousal benefit under another federal law. In California, teachers who participate in STRS do not participate in Social Security so are not eligible for PART A or any monetary Social Security pension after the WEP is applied if they have any supplementary earnings. Where does the state come in? In California, each district contributes a matching percentage for its employees and California contributes approximately 5-6 percent. In our current state fiscal crisis, this contribution is being looked at. STRS is a separate fund, however, mandated by law, and so pensioners receive their pensions from it, not from the State of California. Depriving the pensioners of their only source of income will not help California solve its problems.

Let’s look at some other issues. Currently, West Contra Costa maintains a lifetime medical benefit that is not sustainable. This fact has been well known for some time. So the elimination of this benefit has been anticipated and is in fact, one of the items being negotiated. In addition, because of additional educational cuts from the state, a cap on the amount paid for medical benefits for current employees is proposed. However, more cuts need to be made so there is a proposal to eliminate medical benefits for employee’s families. If the teachers strike, this will be one of the reasons.

Another issue is class size reduction. California passed a bill several years ago allowing districts to reduce class size for grades K-3 to 20 students. This is expensive and currently costs WCCUSD approximately $12 million a year. Why does this matter? Frequently we all have heard and read comments usually beginning, “…when I was in school”… etc. I grew up in what was then Richmond Union School District in El Cerrito. I attended school in the 1950’s. In Elementary school in the post WWII years, we had class sizes of 40 or more. I walked more than a mile to and from school safely beginning at age five. I crossed a busy railroad track which is now defunct and the site of BART and there were no safety concerns. When I went to school I went with a stomach filled with a hot breakfast and a lunch box filled with a home-made nutritious lunch. I wore my “school clothes” as little girls were not allowed to wear pants to school. I sat in classes with 40 plus students at desks bolted to the floor in the style seen in “Little House on the Prairie.” At that time, California’s schools were among the best in the country. Despite the frequent air raid sirens and emergency drills during the Korean War, we did well. 98% of my El Cerrito High School graduation class went on to some form of higher education. I sat in classes with children who all spoke English. None of my classmates had a disability. Everyone was clean, fed and ready to learn. We misbehaved rarely. I distinctly remember being kept after school and made to put my head down and then scrub the “blackboards” for talking too much and sometimes, for day dreaming or for reading a book hidden in my desk instead of doing my lessons. When I was kept home the teacher did not have to ask permission to do it. For those students who got into more trouble, they were sent to the Principal where the dreaded paddle awaited. Every school had a library and a librarian, and a school nurse. How times have changed! When I hear the comments of “when I was in school we had 35 students and no problems” I know we are speaking of “apples and oranges” today. Our teachers are faced with over 90 native languages in West Contra Costa. Students come to school stressed, hungry and distracted. Students with disabilities are integrated (and rightly so) with the others. These students have a need for individualization and attention, however. That is hard to do with a class of 30 first graders. Our teachers are confronted by students who are hungry, ill prepared to learn, and with short attention spans due to too many factors to go into here. Too often they do not respect their teachers and are uninterested in learning. Concerned teachers frequently do not get the support they need from parents. Parents who are busy trying to make ends meet, single parents, teenage parents, parents who do not speak English and thus have limited ways of communicating with the school. Lest we all assume there are translators available, unless the language is Spanish, translators are difficult to find. And WCCUSD has students who speak 90 different languages coming from all over the world. So class size is important to caring teachers.

What about those comments we all hear about the teachers only caring about salaries? Teachers, for a start, do not earn a 12 month salary. It is a ten month salary from which that mandatory 8% goes to STRS. This is another reason why so many teachers work different jobs over the summer or on a part-time basis. Some districts pay better than other districts. Why is that? California’s educational budgeting process has become so complicated and convoluted there is no simple answer. Equalization laws have attempted to even things out but it hasn’t worked. School districts are not “for profit” entities. Their “income” comes from Average Daily Attendance (ADA). When attendance is up, they get more. When attendance is down, they get less. Currently the entire state of California is experiencing, on top of everything else, declining enrollment.

West Contra Costa has some additional burdens unique to it. In 1991, the district ran out of money – not due to state budgetary issues – but due to gross over-spending by the then Superintendent, Walter T. Marks, backed by the School Board at the time. WCCUSD, then known as Richmond Unified School District, was set to close when a lawsuit against the state of California was filed. Consequently, WCCUSD has the dubious distinction of being the first district in the state to become bankrupt. California bailed the district out. The name was changed to try to erase the stigma from Richmond Unified to West Contra Costa Unified which more accurately describes the multiple city school district. However, there was a price. The district was required to pay back the loan at a high interest rate. Although that interest rate has been renegotiated several times, it won’t be paid off until 2021. Efforts at having California “forgive” the loan have failed even though other districts (Vallejo, Oakland) have also experienced bankruptcy and have not had to pay back their bail-out funds. So those payments come out of the “general fund”. Today there are a variety of funds that go to the public schools. Unfortunately, most of those funds come with strings attached. That is, the state and federal government dictate how those funds must be used. So a fund specified for text-books cannot be used for salaries, etc. Until local School Boards have more flexibility in determining where their funds should be used in meeting the needs of their individual districts, this remains a problem. Currently, the state has eased up in this area providing some limited relief.

So here we are. The WCCUSD preliminary budget that the Board reviewed on June 3rd included the savings from some recent gains in state flexibility as well as all the federal stimulus funding. Yet the budget for 2009-2010 still has a deficit of more than $16 million dollars. It is ironic that the state can run without a balanced budget, but state law prohibits school districts from doing so. WCCUSD still has an overseer from the state as a part of their original bankruptcy. While school district budgets must be approved by the County prior to being submitted to the state, WCCUSD’s budget must also be approved by the state appointed Trustee. With the failure of the much maligned May 19th initiatives, the initial May Revise projections revealed an additional $6.3 million loss of revenue for the current school year (2008/2009). Since the current school year funds are already spent, WCCUSD now is being asked to pay back additional funds! And WCCUSD is not alone. This situation is being faced by virtually all 1000 school districts in the state.

When Herculeans hear comments, therefore, about teachers possibly striking, the possible benefits of breaking off from WCCUSD and other issues, they need to understand the predicament currently being faced. As a former student, parent, teacher and administrator in WCCUSD, I have never, in 60 years, seen a situation such as that we are facing today. Both our teachers and our administrators need our support as they struggle to find a solution and still provide a quality education to our children.

* Susan Keeffe has an Ed.D. in Educational Administration, an M.S. in Special Education, B.A. in Journalism/Advertising with a second major in Psychology and holds 5 credentials. She worked as a special education teacher for 19 years, and as a special education administrator for 13 years and currently works as a part time consultant for the special education department. She has resided in Hercules for 21 years.