Finances at fore in final 2012 meeting

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

The Benicia Unified School District Board of Trustees is meeting a week early, and for the last time this year.

The board’s annual organizational meeting, at which it elects a new president and clerk, will take place Thursday night, and the panel won’t meet again until 2013.

The board also will be asked to approve a student achievement plan for Benicia High and Middle schools, and will consider for approval Chief Business Official Tim Rahill’s recommendation of a new financial/human resources software system, among other business.

Besides a new board chief, trustees will approve board representatives to Solano County School Boards Association, the District/City Liaison Committee, the district/BHS facilities committee of the Benicia Youth Action Coalition, Valero Community Advisory Committee, Board Policy Committee, Benicia Community Sustainability Commission, the district Curriculum Council and other committees.

The board also will approve the calendar of board meetings for 2013.

In matters requiring board attention, Director of Curriculum and Instruction Dr. Karen Dubrule will ask trustees to discuss and approve the Single Plan for Student Achievement for Benicia High and Benicia Middle schools. Last week the board spproved the SPSAs for Matthew Turner and Joe Henderson elementary schools and Liberty High School.

“The purpose of the Single Plan for Student Achievement … is to create a cycle of continuous improvement of student performance and to ensure that all students succeed in reaching academic standards set by the State Board of Education,” Dubrule wrote in a report to the board.

Each year, she wrote, school Site Councils — which consist of principals, teachers, parents and others — develop a SPSA with the required six steps:

• Measure effectiveness of improvement strategies at the school.

• Seek input from school advisory committees.

• Reaffirm or revise school goals.

• Revise improvement strategies and expenditures.

• Recommend the approved SPSA to the governing board.

• Monitor implementation of the SPSA.

“The plan must be amended and approved by the local governing board at least annually and whenever there are material changes that affect the academic program for students at the school,” Dubrule wrote, recommending approval of the high school and middle school SPSAs.

At last week’s board meeting, Rahill presented the proposed new financial/human resources software system, Escape, for the school district.

He said Escape was chosen after the Solano County Office of Education conducted a search and interview process. He said the district has been paying $95,000 per year for its current system, though the cost has been slightly lower this year; conversely, “For the first five years of Escape starting next year, the district will pay about $78,000 per year. After we pay off the implementation cost, it will be about $45,000 per year.”

Also Thursday, Rahill will recommend the board review and file an independent auditor’s report for the year ending June 30, 2012.

“In the auditor’s opinion, the financial statements for the Benicia Unified School District present fairly, in all material respects, the respective financial position of the governmental activities, each major fund, and the aggregate remaining fund information of the Benicia Unified School District as of June 30, 2012, and the respective changes in financial position for the year then ended in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America,” he wrote.

If You Go
The BUSD board will meet in closed session at 6 p.m. and open session at 7 p.m. in the district board room, 350 East K St.