No Graduation, No Grades BUT Raises Abound

On April 8, 2020 – an opinion piece ran in Voice of San Diego titled: Districts Couldn’t Stop Raising Employee Pay – Now Kids Will Pay the Price

The opinion piece laid out some very interesting statistics for those in San Diego County Education as a whole. At Watchdog, we were curious what it looked like specifically for San Dieguito Union High School District.

Toddmaddison.com shines a new light on K12 Transparency in San Diego County and the light becomes even more glaring as we break it down for San Dieguito UHSD.

The People of California recognized that cuts made as a result of the Great Recession had gone too deep into education. In 2012, via Proposition 30, the people voted to increase taxes to fund better education for our kids.

According to Maddison's analysis, since 2012, funding for Schools in California has increased 43.96% or 6.26% per year. In San Dieguito Union High School District funding increased 32.99% or 4.87% per year. So yes, as stated often by the administration, school board and foundations , SDUHSD has been funded at a lesser rate compared to the over all State funding level. Watchdog has never disputed this fact.

Yet, if you look at how employees have been compensated compared to the data outlined in the Voice of San Diego piece, SDUHSD is well out of balance:

* explore the full analysis for SDUHSD here, which includes full methodology and references.

The rate of annual pay increases in SDUHSD at 6.76% far exceeds the annual funding increase rate of 4.87% for the same period.

Where is the money coming from?

When will the Board layout this so called "comprehensive package" to address employee compensation they claim to be discussing; after they give Dr. Haley his additional secret raise?

In light of the current state, our students' education successes, health and well-being should be at the forefront of concern in our Public Education Institutions.

However, how can we trust that decisions being made are keeping Students at the forefront, when all we ever see discussed by our School Board only address the needs of the adults.

Here is what our School Board thinks are important items for discussion and decision making during the April 21, 2020 School Board Meeting 10:00 am start:

District continues to be more concerned about the adults then it is about educating our Students.

Where is the innovation?

Here are some ideas and thoughts that have come into Watchdog:

1) Where are the discussions around a social distancing plan for graduation ceremonies for Seniors? Did we not watch the Air Force Academy Graduation this morning? All our graduations take place out side, we have awesome AV departments on campus -- school logo masks can take the place of a cap and gown (students would rather wear their own style anyway). Where is the innovation -- where is the spark of excellance that this District Leadership claims it has.

2) How did we ever allow a Distance Learning Program that is not focused on learning? How are our educators not skilled at using technology in the classroom? Don't we promote an advanced, highly sophisticated District? Don't our teachers have syllabus created with a grading schedule. This laziness of credit/NC is for teachers -- it is not for students. Other schools in North County that are considered direct competition with SDUHSD schools are still giving grades -- Cathedral Catholic, La Jolla Country Day, and truly engaging the public in the conversation ~ Carlsbad USD.