14 Jun Fairmont Elementary Teachers, Parents Ask School Board for Additional Funding

(Screenshot captured by Samantha Kennedy / The CC Pulse)

By Samantha Kennedy

This week alone, West Contra Costa Unified school board clerk Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy said he was asked to fund various district services amounting to roughly $17 million that the district doesn’t have.

“Every week, I hear about how our cuts are hurting kids,” said Gonzalez-Hoy at the Wednesday school board meeting.

The district has ways of filling some of these gaps, but sites that typically receive supplemental funding say they are now being left out. Parents and teachers from Fairmont Elementary School in El Cerrito for weeks have asked board members to allow the school to keep its Title I status, which is based on a site’s percentage of low-income students and would provide the school with more than $60,000 in funding.

“We’re literally talking about whether the (transitional kindergarten) and kinder classrooms will have enough toilet paper and crayons to make it through the year,” said Christine Rinki, a parent at Fairmont who’s been pushing to help the school continue to receive Title I funding. “Without additional funding, they will not.”

Kim Moses, associate superintendent of business services, said that 60% of Fairmont’s Title I funding was spent, going to a contract with Bay Area Community Resources, teacher salaries, materials and supplies.

The district needs to “be creative and support (Fairmont’s) needs,” she said, suggesting communicating with the site to get a better understanding of those needs.

Moses also said that giving Fairmont Title I funding would result in significant reductions to other Title I schools, some with a higher concentration of low-income students, “significant enough that schools may not be able to continue the program as planned.”

Board members recognized the challenges the district faces regarding the budget but pushed for solutions.

“I definitely want Fairmont to be looked at,” said Trustee Leslie Reckler, whose area includes Fairmont, “not only Fairmont, it’s any school that got stripped of Title I funds, to figure out how to…better land them.”

Several appointed to key district positions

The board approved the appointments of 10 employees who will oversee various departments, including Business Services and Human Resources, beginning as soon as next month. Some appointees will transition from their current interim roles.

Of those appointed, seven from Superintendent Kenneth “Chris” Hurst’s Executive Team, which is responsible for the district’s departments and programs, were added. Most of the appointees to the Executive Team have already been serving in the position in an interim capacity.

Appointees to the Executive Team are Kim Moses, who will continue in her role as chief business officer; Guthrie Fleischman, continuing as the special education local plan area director; Camille Johnson, continuing her role as the associate superintendent of human resources; Raechelle Forrest, continuing as the director of communications; Laurie Roberts, as the interim chief technology officer; Katherine Acosta-Verprauskus to interim associate superintendent of teaching and learning; and Summer Sigler to interim associate superintendent of K-12 operations.

Hurst’s team adds an additional member by splitting the role of the chief academic officer in two — now made up of Acosta-Verprauskus and Sigler. Sonja Neely-Johnson, who currently holds that position, will retire at the end of the month.

Other appointments were to school sites and the special education and human resources departments.

The next regularly scheduled West Contra Costa Unified school board meeting, where the 2024-25 school year budget will be adopted, is June 26.