Public Hearing on School Budget

My wife and I attended the Public hearing on the budget on 2/17/2009. The meeting was called to order at 6pm and was presided by Mr. Robert ...

My wife and I attended the Public hearing on the budget on 2/17/2009.

The meeting was called to order at 6pm and was presided by Mr. Robert O'Donnell (President), Mrs. Rita J. Peters, (VP), Mr. Randy Freeman and Mr. Ron Ulibarri. Mr. Jerry Bowman (Clerk) was not present.

There is still no final decision on the school budget for 2010/2011 since we are waiting for the state to vote on their budget. However, the council appeared optimistic.

The Menifee Valley Unified School District needs to save over 5 million dollars over the next 2 years. Some of the proposals included increasing class sizes either this year or next year. If this occurs, a large number of teachers, possibly up to 65, will lose their jobs. Some community members were hopeful that transitioning to a traditional schedule may help alleviate part of the shortfall, but only in part.

Mrs. Wells, a 5th grade teacher at Callie Kirkpatrick, was concerned that eliminating the class size reduction is "not in the best interest of the students". She further stated that this would result in long term negative consequences and that math and language arts education would suffer.

Josie Horton, a parent had this to say...(Its not the best quality, sorry!)




The meeting only lasted 30 minutes. Further discussions to review the school budget recommendations will be held next week. The meeting is Tuesday, February 24th, at 6 PM and will be held at Callie Kirkpatrick Elementary, which is located on the corners of Newport and Menifee Road.

A special meeting is scheduled for Wed, February 25th at 4:30 to approve the budget resolution. It will be held at the District Office.

Related

Menifee-Union-School-District 7930324056101901864

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  1. Jerry Bowman was in attendance. He arrived a few minutes late, but was there for all the business of the meeting.

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  2. Is the special meeting on Wednesday open to the public?

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  3. Unless the newly signed state budget changed the amount that needs to be trimmed from the school budget, it is $14 million, not $5 million.

    Jason

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  4. At the meeting, they mentioned 5 million, the NC times says 10 million. I am not sure what the number is at this point. In either case, it appears huge cuts needs to take place.

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  5. I'm just a grandparent, so forgive me if I don't have all the facts.

    When it comes to budgets isn't there always two sides, revenue and expenditures? This is really hard because we are dependent on the state and federal government for tomorrows revenues, and our expenses are inflated due to state, federal and union contracts and mandates. Seems we have very little control over our children's education after all.

    If this was a business I might look for a new vendor...oh wait, there is only one. Seems the government has us coming and going. Now I know how Chrysler feels. Isn't there something we have in common as a community that demands something better?

    How many teachers are willing to leave the union and contract directly with the school district? How many MUSD are Menifee parents too? What can MUSD do to generate revenues with no strings attached? Didn't one of the candidates have an idea for a credit union that could get us through some of these tough times by generating revenue? Are there any school assets that can be mined for revenue generation?

    Can any of the subjects or lower grades be taught with Para-instructors or Community experts under the guidance of fewer teachers? We need to think outside the box..this may not be the last of the budget cuts.

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  6. I am a father of two kids in the district. I fought in the first golf war and also the conflict in Panama. I have bled for my country, and lost friends along the way. I do understand the need to be compassionate and feel we need to put our best foot forward and lead by example. Times are hard for schools and individual families. We are all making very hard sacrifices. I guess my question is if we took all the kids without a social security number out of the schools and omitted bilingual education would we not be able to make the cuts necessary and still be able to provide the level of education that our kids deserve. Like I said hard choices need to be made and I think American kids should be come first. I would like to apologize if I offended anyone

    Thank you for your time
    Jason

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  7. Eric, thanks for going to the meeting and sharing this with all of us! Why so so many people need to be negative.

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  8. Yeah, thanks Eric and Steve for having this site!

    ReplyDelete

Readers are invited to leave a comment to contribute to public dialogue. Comments will be reviewed by a moderator and will not be approved if they include profanity, defamatory or libelous comments, or may otherwise be considered objectionable by Menifee 24/7 editors.

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