- Welcome staff, students, families, and community to our board meeting.
- Let’s start with some recognitions and accomplishments:
- Three students from SYH were finalists in the Union-Tribune Cartoon caption contest for the week of Aug. 23rd and 30th. Congratulations to 11th graders Xochitl Mancillas, Jose Merida, and Ruben Jara. Ruben was an ELD III student last year. Thanks also to teacher Miriam Rachelson for encouraging students to submit their entries!
- Congratulations to CSEA President Troy Johnson for being selected as the California Region 97 Representative. Region 97 covers SD Unified and SDCOE. This position gives Mr. Johnson association oversight of those chapters and makes him a leader at the state level! We are so proud and grateful for his leadership!
- SYH French teacher Maylen Rafuls helped SYH qualify as a Global Navigator High School with scholarships worth $25k to provide to students to study abroad. Last year student Angela Lopez visited France . Thanks to Ms. Rufuls, many other students will have the same opportunity!
- For several years both SUHI and ORH would annually host their own X-Country Invitational. This year ORH Coach Julian Valdez and SUHI Coach Jaime Romero joined together and hosted the 1st Annual Ian Cumming/Tim Latham 2019 XC Invitational with over 40 schools that competed, over 2000 athletes participated. Both Coach Cumming and Latham were there to be honored for giving so much to build our X-Country and Track & Field programs in our district. Twelve of our high schools were there and I was able to stop by and catch the final race of the day. Rohr Park was packed! Here are the results:
- Boys Varsity Mustang Division 5,000 Meters – SYH, HH, MVH, CPH ranked #3rd , 4th , 5th , 6th respectively. Runner Missael Felix came in 3rd overall; Miguel Tisnado – HH was 7th, Jimmy Blyland – HH was 8th. . There were 104 runners.
- Boys Varsity Red Devils Division 5,000 Meters – ORH, BVH, OLH, SUHI, ELH ranked 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th respectively. SUHI runner Jose Galvan came in 2nd overall; Carter Stuhlmacher – OLH was 7th; Dominic Garcia – ORH was 9th. In this division there were 110 runners.
- Girls Varsity Mustang Division 2.5 Miles – HH won 1st Place. CVH, SoH, SYH, MVH ranked 3rd, 9th, 10th, 11th respectively. Estella Bustillos – CPH came in 4th overall; Nicole Byland – HH was 7th; Tamara Cornejo – HH was 10th out of 94 runners.
- Girls Varsity Red Devils Division 2.5 Miles – ELH won 2nd Place. OLH, ORH, BVH, SUHI ranked 7th, 8th, 9th, 11th respectively. Lauren Salt – BVH came in 6th overall, McKenzie Kelly – ORH was 11th, Rosanna Javier – OLH was 12th, Lake Merriefield & Amanda Challburg – ELH were 15th/16th out of 107 runners. You can find the rest of the results for frosh/soph and JV here.
- On Saturday night, the 29th Annual Salute to Teachers was held at the Balboa Theater downtown. You may remember out of all the teachers of the year selected for each school in our district, 5 were selected as Sweetwater Teachers of the Year. Those five are Julio Avason – OLH, Cheryl Bayley – ELH, Brian Dougherty – BVM, Don Dumas – BVH, Robert Manroe – CPH. Ms. Bayley, Mr. Dougherty, and Mr. Dumas chose to compete at the County level. We are happy to report if you haven’t heard already that Mr. Don Dumas was selected as 1 of 5 San Diego County Teachers of the Year. Sweetwater has been represented with one of the top 5 County teachers 4 out of the last 5 years. That is just one more indication of the quality of teaching that our students receive on a district-wide basis. Congratulations to all Sweetwater Teachers of the Year! To all teachers, we thank you for being that very powerful role model and inspiring our students every day! We will be inviting our Sweetwater Teachers of the Year to a future board meeting to acknowledge them in person.
- Tonight Dr. Salkeld will provide the next financial update – it is the annual financial report on our Unaudited Actuals (UA). The UAs is the reconciliation and closing of the financial books for our revenues and expenditures for the previous year 2018-19. As you recall, it was exactly one year ago when we (our finance team) determined there were problems with the 2017-18 UAs. It was September 2018 when we determined we had a shortfall for the 2017-18 of approximately $4M. We notified the County Office of Education; they did not discover this problem – our staff did.
- As you also know, the deficit triggered a series of actions including the requirement to revise the 2018-19 budget by Oct. 8, 2018 and a Fiscal Health Risk Analysis by FCMAT.
- In order to balance the budget we negotiated agreements with our Labor partners: an early retirement incentive and 2 furlough days. Once again, we thank our labor partners for their foresight and wisdom. SDCOE eventually approved our 2018-19 revised budget.
- By the time we got to the 1st Interim Budget Report in December, our deficit increased to $10.5M for the 2018-19 year. At that point in time, December 2018, we had a deficit for that current year, as well as future years. As a result, SDCOE negatively certified our budget.
- As a result of the Fiscal Health Risk Analysis Review reported in December, SDCOE requested another audit by FCMAT called the AB139 Extraordinary Audit. That report is still pending and we do not know the projected completion date; however, our Board is committed to sharing the information once it is received.
- By the 2nd Interim Budget report in March 2019, we were able to decrease the deficit in the 2018-19 year to $4.9M. This is in direct correlation to offering a mid-year early retirement plan.
- When we got to the adopted budget in June 2019, the 2018-19 deficit had decreased to $4.3M, additional savings due to the SERP.
- Again, the early retirement incentive enabled us to not only decrease our deficit, it also helped us increase our cash flow so we could pay down Fund 49, the Mello Roos fund.
- You will see that tonight’s report and the numbers presented are pretty close to the numbers our finance team shared for the adopted budget in June. This means that all the work that we have done over the past year is making a difference in the accuracy of our finances.
- Thank you Dr. Salkeld for bringing the needed changes in our system to improve our results. We still have work to be done; but, we are in a much better place today thanks to your knowledge, expertise, and leadership.
- 2018_19_UA_Board_Presentation_Final – PDF
- Thank you for your support and collaboration!