Fillmore Unified School District

The District and FUTA teams met today. The District proposed to use the session to respond to FUTA’s many data requests, and to provide important information about how the ongoing state fiscal crisis has impacted the 2008-2009, 2009-2010, and the 2010- 2011 school year. By law, districts are required to certify solvency for the current fiscal year and the next two fiscal years.

The District asked to begin negotiations on two time-sensitive items immediately:
Shortening the instructional year by 5 days, beginning in 2010-2010 with a corresponding 5 days of per diem reduction of the salary schedule. FUTA’s share would provide $390,659 in savings in 2010-2011; and

Modifying health coverage to provide that beginning in 2010-2011, the District will pay the cost of the lowest HMO single, two party, or family health plans. PERS now offers an alternative plan with 100% alignment to Access Plus, meaning no additional employee cost, no change in plan design and no change in doctors. FUTA’s share would provide $205,496 in savings in 2010-2011.

If these savings can be negotiated soon, the District believes we will be able to greatly reduce the number of final layoff notices that it will need to give by May 15, 2010. Two issues that would still remain to be resolved are the realignment of the high school graduation requirements to allow for the creation of career paths and the pending charter appeal to the State.

IMPORTANT BUDGET FACTS:
The District addressed the misconception that there is a $1,469,313 surplus. The surplus is $755,000 which the Board has directed towards the 2010-2011 budget stabilization. Documentation was provided to validate this assertion.

Applying the $755,000 funding to our $2.8 million deficit lowers the anticipated gap to $2.1 million dollars.
The District now faces a 2010-2011 budget deficit of $2.1 million.

If the District determines to “sweep” Tier 3 categorical funding into the general fund in 2010-2011, and applies some potential additional one-time funding sources, this could reduce the remaining deficit to approximately $1.2 million for 2010-2011.

Looking at employee compensation and benefit costs as a percentage of all District funds spent on compensation, FUTA’s share is 69%, CSEA’s share is 20%, and management, confidential/unrepresented’s share is 11% Thus, FUTA’s “fair share” of the remaining deficit is $875,000.

We are very hopeful that negotiations will address these issues that are so important to preserving teacher jobs and District solvency and look forward to continuing a productive discussion with FUTA on Wednesday, February 24.

FUSD Negotiating Team