Comments on: Mt. Diablo district seeks forgiveness from state for failure to comply with grant requirements

By: Theresa Harrington

Theresa Harrington — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 03:13:11 +0000

The board may hire another Student Services Coordinator Monday to comply with the grant: http://esbpublic.mdusd.k12.ca.us/public_itemview.aspx?ItemId=4861&mtgId=336

In addition, it will discuss the vote of No Confidence: http://esbpublic.mdusd.k12.ca.us/public_itemview.aspx?ItemId=4911&mtgId=336

It will also consider revising its policy for involuntary transfer to Olympic Continuation HS: http://esbpublic.mdusd.k12.ca.us/public_itemview.aspx?ItemId=4851&mtgId=336

By: Doctor J

Doctor J — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:50:38 +0000

SBE denies QEIA waivers based on ignorance and incompetence. MDHS waiver application basis is not much different except for portion of QEIA not met. Vallejo attempted corrective action, and Mount did not. http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ci_19726391

By: Doctor J

Doctor J — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:30:44 +0000

The audit reports were signed for on Dec 22, 2011 and shipped to Bryan Richards.

By: Doctor J

Doctor J — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:27:31 +0000

Its about time we as taxpayer just called Christy White directly and asked when our audit reports that we paid for months ago were delivered to MDUSD. I will be surprised at the answer. (619) 270-8222

By: Theresa Harrington

Theresa Harrington — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:23:41 +0000

Perhaps if the SASS job descriptions were approved by the board at the time the positions were created, everybody would have known what somebody was supposed to do and nobody would be to blame for anybody else’s failure to do their jobs.

By: g

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:20:30 +0000

My (borrowed) thoughts about the Gang at Dent:

“An important job had to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.”

By: Theresa Harrington

Theresa Harrington — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:51:38 +0000

On a completely separate note, the County BOE also reviewed its 2010-11 Single Audit Annual Financial Report for the County School Service Fund on Wednesday.
It was prepared by the Christy White Accountancy firm (which is the same firm MDUSD hired). Perhaps this means MDUSD’s audit will be available soon.

By: Theresa Harrington

Theresa Harrington — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:47:11 +0000

As O’Brien noted, Sachs and Rugani “sprang into action” when they got the letter from the CDE in February (confirming the COE letter from October 2010). Apparently, they made some sort of correction to the Class Size Reduction calculations for 2009-10.

However, they and McClatchy do not appear to have addressed the school’s continued failure to comply in 2010-11. So, the action taken was not sufficient to remedy the problem.

By: Doctor J

Doctor J — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:42:17 +0000

@Th#193 Giving it the old college try, and not making it due to underestimation, is way different that MDUSD’s failure to take corrective action with lots of money available. Lawrence, Lock, Rugani, Sachs, McClatchy all had knowledge and failed to take any corrective action. Please show me one iota of corrective action they took since Oct 27, 2010.

By: Theresa Harrington

Theresa Harrington — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:02:05 +0000

Although I wasn’t able to watch the SBE meeting discussion of waivers, I would guess that CTA took a strong stand because the money was supposed to be spent meeting the requirements. Instead, MDHS apparently had a large amount of its grant unspent at the end of the school year — money that could have been spent hiring more teachers to comply with the grant. It remains unclear why school and district staff — who knew their class sizes were not compliant — failed to spend the money they had to hire more teachers.

WCCUSD on the other hand, plans to file a waiver stating that it didn’t have enough money to meet all the requirements, so it was noncompliant in noncore class size reduction, which it appears to believe is less important than core class size, teacher experience, Williams compliance and meeting the counselor ratio. It will be interesting to see if the CDE approves their waiver. They are not pleading ignorance, staff turnover or lack of training.