Faced with a persistent multi-million dollar budget deficit, the West Contra Costa Unified School District is involving the community in its effort to fix its financial problems.
Superintendent Cheryl Cotton’s newly launched 90-day fiscal stabilization plan aims to demystify the district’s financial problems and involve the public through a series of more than a dozen in-person and virtual meetings.
“The fiscal stabilization plan is really about educating the community about where we stand, what are some of the challenges, and what is the decision-making process,” Cotton told the school board at its Wednesday meeting. “That’s the intent of this.”
The 90-day plan is divided into five phases, each designed to build transparency and foster collaboration around the district’s fiscal recovery.
In the first three weeks, the focus will be on a comprehensive budget assessment — examining revenue sources, spending trends and current obligations. The second phase will dig into the root causes of the budget deficit, while the third will focus on developing specific, actionable goals to reduce it. Phase four will outline both short- and long-term strategies to meet the district’s organizational needs and the final phase will evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented solutions.
Each phase includes a trio of community meetings, held in-person at Hercules, El Cerrito and Richmond high schools from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. All sessions can be attended remotely.
Cotton stressed the urgency of the stabilization effort. WCCUSD narrowly avoided state receivership last year by making $19 million in cuts and dipping into one of its reserves, which is expected to be depleted by 2027. Decisions around budget have been divisive, particularly on the labor front. The teachers union could authorize a strike this fall because of stalled salary negotiations.
Receivership occurs when a California school district receives an emergency state loan to remain solvent, a move that also strips the district of local control.
In 1991, WCCUSD notoriously became the first school district in the state to be declared insolvent. The state created a new emergency loan program in response, and lent WCCUSD $29 million to stay afloat,an amount the district repaid over 21 years, with $1.4 million in annual payments plus interest.
“We must now address our current budget issues to prevent a future need of an emergency loan,” Cotton said. “The fiscal stabilization plan will ensure financial stability, support long-term planning and retain local control of WCCUSD.”
Cotton shared a number of websites to help the community understand and explore the financial position of the district.
WCCUSD board Trustee Jamela Smith-Folds said providing web resources is a great first step but asked the district to define jargon and insider terms.
“Can we please make sure that we have, in whatever handout we give out (like) a list of acronyms, shared definitions, some of the things that are going to keep us all on the same page,” Smith-Folds said. “Because of the complexity in school budgets, we want to make sure that we’re all coming at the same level of learning.”
Board member Guadalupe Enllana, the board’s clerk, urged the district to widen its outreach, particularly to partners such as Richmond City Council members. (Last year some teachers attended a city council meeting and presented information suggesting the school district was mismanaging its finances.)
“I think sometimes we hold the scope so close to our families and parents,” Enllana said. “But we have a greater community that’s also invested, that we don’t necessarily reach every time we talk about budgets or just site information.”
Board President Leslie Reckler echoed the call for inclusivity, encouraging Cotton to engage various parent advisory groups such as District Local Control Accountability Plan and the Community Advisory Committee. She also noted how unique and special Cotton’s initiative is.
“I’m filled with gratitude for the number of meetings and the amount of community outreach,” Reckler said. “A lot of people are going to be out of the house a lot of nights, in addition to regular daytime jobs, so I want to say ahead of time that I’m really grateful, and I just want to thank you in advance.”
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“I like being open and again, this is not our norm, it’s not something that we normally do.”
— WCCUSD Superintendent Cheryl Cotton on an upcoming series of public meetings
Cotton welcomed the suggestions and said the board will revisit the plan after each section of meetings take place to publicly discuss community feedback.
“I like being open and again, this is not our norm, it’s not something that we normally do,” Cotton said in regard to her fiscal solvency plan. “It is very involved and very intensive.”
The ambitious meeting schedule is in line with what Cotton promised when she first assumed her position. Last month, the freshly minted superintendent kickstarted her 100-day plan with listening tours, meetings with principals, students, parents and teachers, offering a number of venues for the community to share concerns.
“We are one district and one budget. We have the resources that we have, and we need to collectively make great decisions about how we will move forward, given our resources,” Cotton said. “Together, we will maintain local control of our district decisions and our district budget. That is our goal.”
This is a very disappointing article about a very disappointing district. No one wants to address the elephant in the room: the state of California’s defunding of education. Teacher salaries have gone done 20% in constant dollars over 20 years, and they still can’t balance the budget. So they fail to fill vacancies and hire subs at half the cost of teachers. Superintendent Cotton: Cancel all these pointless meetings, get together with other superintendents, and pitch a tent outside the capital until Newsom stops behaving like a Republican. The wealthy in CA have received a windfall of ~$500billion out of Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax cut; Dems should tax that money to improve schools.
This meeting schedule has disappeared from wccusd’s website, and the events are no longer on their calendar. What happened??
We will take a look, but because the district website has been undergoing updates we often find that meetings can drop off of the calendars. Sometimes refreshing your browser helps.