CUSD Update

Capo USD constituents can stay informed by reading Patch.com reporter’s Penny Arevalo’s articles. Arevalo uses a no-spin approach in addressing a wide range of community issues, including CUSD’s financial state.

On Jan. 6, Arevalo described CUSD’s borrowing binge, “To fix cash-flow problems, the school board eyes another short-term loan, bringing Capo Unified’s total borrowing this year to $100 million.”

On the agenda for the school board’s Jan. 9 meeting is a $25-million loan to make ends meet through the end of the school year. http://sanjuancapistrano.patch.com/articles/capo-to-borrow-at-unprecedented-rates

Arevalo reports, “The combined $100 million in loans represents 27 percent of the district’s $372-million budget.”

In December, Deputy Superintendent of Business and Support Services Ronald N. Lebs left CUSD for a position in Fullerton Joint Union High School District. Wasn’t the 2010 CUSD election of a union-backed majority supposed to turn things around for the district? A year later, CUSD’s financial leader jumps ship.

Responding to the Patch.com article, a Capo constituent nailed it in describing the district’s growing financial woes:

“This isn't simply the result to California fiscal crisis. CUSD has been struggling with financial problems for more than five years. And yet CUEA [teachers union] initiated discontent, went on strike rather than accept a pay cut, financed their trustee candidates to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars and saw them installed. At the first meeting of the union's board, their candidates voted to kickback teachers’ salaries at the expense of our kids. This happened after the state had endured a couple of years of fiscal problems. In CUSD layoffs have continued, class sizes continue to increase, the school year gets shorter but teachers' salaries were restored and the district upped its contribution to employees’ benefit programs. It is simply false to claim what is going on in CUSD is the result of California's fiscal problems. Our district was plundered by rapacious and corrupt union practices.”__