HUSD Still Under Water
In Which: Bruckner-Carrillo complains about formatting, HUSD is still $12 million short after the cuts, And Trustee Prada asks for a spreadsheet.

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LCAP Suggests More Needed Amid Budget Cuts
The Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) is, in essence, a second strategic plan that is specifically used for a pot of State money—around $60,000,000. That plan kind of works within the actual Strategic Plan for the District and is informed by the Equity and Anti-Racism Policies. In order to do what the LCAP says, the District creates a bunch of other Action Plans—Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA), Literacy Plan, etc.
And if this sounds like a whole bunch of administrative nonsense, you’re kind of right! Part of the reason why the School District is such a mess is because there are so many different funding streams with so many different strings attached to them. State money requires the LCAP, there seem to be several dozen different Proposition and Bond money buckets that all have their own restrictions, and then there’s the grants that have very specific strings.
And a big part of administering the District is figuring out how all these pieces fit together, writing up a mountain of paperwork for a dozen administrative bodies, and then actually trying to do the thing as everything gets more and more expensive and difficult. Being from a Higher Education background, this all sounds like complete madness to me and it feels like a miracle that anything happens at all.
But the LCAP is pretty important, because it’s the plan for your tax dollars—most of the school funding is tax dollars, but this is the general stuff from the State. The District apparently got a lot of feedback in a short time—1,300 “educational partner responses” which seem to include students, staff, teachers, and parents—to inform what to do with the money.
The big ideas are to offer the following:
Direct support to Students
Whole Child Enrichment
Equity and Inclusion
Family and Staff Support
Technology and Resources
The most important ones were the Direct Supports, Whole Child Enrichment, and Equity and Inclusion. Obviously, it all ties together and it’s all important, but according to Staff, these were the areas that would receive the most focus.
The ethos of the LCAP this year is summed up in the above image. Using Equity and Anti-Racism, Social-Emotional Learning, and Rigorous Academics, the District hopes to create Student Success. That’s the vision that the District hopes to bring to life, but the reality rarely lines up.
The actual student success metrics leave a lot to be desired. “While overall student achievement remains below where we want to be,” Staff said, “[HUSD stakeholders] are working hard and remain committed to fostering rigorous instruction in a safe, inclusive environment.” HUSD’s graduation rate is 14% below the state average of 90%. Chronic absenteeism—regularly missing school—is also about 8% higher than the State average, and the English Language Arts (ELA) scores are 16% lower than the State average.
That being said, things are getting better—if more slowly than anyone would like. Black student graduation rates are up 12% to 84%, and Latine student graduation rates are up to 72.5%. Also, Chronic Absenteeism is improving across the board. Unfortunately, despite suspensions decreasing, “our African-American and Foster Youth students remain disproportionately impacted,” according to Staff.
And despite all the effort being put into raising test scores, there hasn’t been any progress in the last several years. “[There has been] little to no movement in CASP Language Arts and Math scores,” Staff said.
One of the ideas to address the stubborn test scores is to implement “grade-level formative assessments.” According to Wikipedia, these are “a range of formal and informal assessment procedures conducted by teachers during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment.” Apparently there aren’t any institutional assessments to gauge student progress and compare them across the district.
The report also highlighted the importance of “school-based social emotional counselors.” As we covered last week, at least some of this is paid for by the County, conducted by the Hayward Police Department, and implemented in HUSD Schools. But that only covers around 4 full-time counselors across as many school sites—the need is clearly higher. Unfortunately, enormous budget cuts were just implemented and—as we’ll see later—more is likely coming.
Some help may come in the form of what’s called Differentiated Assistance. It doesn’t appear as though there is direct monetary help—even though that would solve some of the problems—but the Alameda County Office of Education (ACOE) is working with HUSD to help address the low outcomes that multiple student groups have had for the last several years.
Might Be Issues With The LCAP
Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo opened by asking if the ACOE had given any feedback or critiques of the District’s LCAP. “I continue to hear that there’s challenges with the development of our LCAP,” he said. Staff said that they work closely with a person at the ACOE to develop it and that the feedback is mostly internal and used to ensure that HUSD meets the State requirements.
“Our LCAP looks different from any other district… in Alameda County,” Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo clarified, “Like drastically different. That leads me to believe there’s an issue with how we develop it.” Staff said that many other districts use the same template, and also hinted that HUSD may use the same one, though it was unclear from her comments.
Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo also pressed on the timeline for feedback. “I have an issue with the fact that we waited until the very last minute to send out feedback to our families,” he said. Staff pushed back, “We had multiple employee and parent feedback sessions that were held in January and early February.” The delay was because they were waiting to gauge the impact of goals that were set the previous year, which pushed everything to January and February.
Trustee Oquenda asked if there was a way to adjust the metrics so that they made more sense at the level they operate at. For example, some of the metrics deal specifically with Algebra, while it may be more meaningful to assess Math more generally. “I wish I could make decisions around the metrics and actions,” Staff said. “They are a lot.”
Superintendent Wu-Fernandez said that they’re working to align the Strategic Plan for the District with the LCAP to improve efficiency and reduce the number of metrics that need to be assessed.
Trustee Prada asked what had been changed because of the lack of improvement shown in the metrics. The issue, according to Staff, is how the LCAP and Strategic Plan timelines work—the District is using a Strategic Plan developed pre-Pandemic still, which doesn’t really make sense anymore. Meanwhile the LCAP has a 3-year cycle, so it’s changed more often.
But this issue isn’t unique to HUSD. Staff said that all districts had received feedback, presumably from the State, around this. “We need to ensure that if some actions are not working, for the next LCAP update, what are we going to do different?”
Trustee Prada also pressed on different assessments beyond test scores, which many educators know are not a full picture of student development. Staff pressed for the formative assessments. “[They] help guide instruction because we can see in real time how our students are doing at the end of the trimester,” she said. “It’s definitely not the solution to it all,” she admitted.
Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo then pressed, again, on the formatting of the LCAP, comparing it unfavorably to the one put out by Castro Valley Unified School District. “I don’t see the connection with these goals,” he said. “I would ask that we just be honest about if we are doing something wrong with the development of our LCAP, that we look into it, we identify what the issues are.” He pressed for adding more specifics in the different goals sections, “as neighboring districts do.”
Despite Cuts, HUSD Still $12 Million Short
After cutting $50,000,000 from the budget in February, HUSD is still predicted to be $12,000,000 over budget in the coming year. The budget presentation predicted years of declining Average Daily Attendance (ADA), which directly impacts funding, and discovered that around $900,000 was actually due to an error and had to be removed from the budget. Despite the bleak outlook, the Board of Trustees were, at the least, unsurprised by the news.
One of the biggest drivers of HUSD’s budget is the number of students and how frequently they actually attend school—even though this is a terrible way to fund schools, it’d be up to the State to change it. During the second half of the last school year, ADA dropped pretty significantly.
Staff guessed that it was due to the Trump Administration’s emphasis on deportations, especially due to the high immigrant population in the District. “We have adjusted some of our numbers downward to keep that trend,” Staff said, since the Trump Administration isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
There was also a graph showing a very high number of high-need students in the district—around 80%. That number includes low-income students, English language learners, and those living in foster homes—though that apparently includes any alternative caregiver of any kind, not just those in the Foster system. While the State offers some additional money for these students, they can only be counted once, so if an English language learner is also low-income, the District only receives extra money once, despite fitting into two categories.
All of this adds up to a pretty bad time for the budget. The reserves are predicted to drop to .43%—compare that to the City scrambling to course correct at around 12%. The District will do a Fall budget revision in around September or October where they will discuss “budget solutions.”
You Got Any More Of Them Contracts?
Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo opened by asking about contracts once again. “There appears to still be a lack of clarity regarding my request,” he said. Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo has been asking about District contracts since January and has yet to receive anything that meets his satisfaction. “This was our one opportunity to find new revenues so these budget n umbers don’t look so bleak in the coming years,” he said.
Superintendent Wu-Fernandez said that the District is working with the fiscal advisor to “design something that makes sense.” Rather than looking specifically at large, Board approved contracts, Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo has asked for a list of all contracts in the District so they can be evaluated. “The contracts don’t just live at the District Office,” Superintendent Wu-Fernandez said, “they also live at the sites. So it does require us to have some ongoing contact with our site administrators.”
The answer still failed to appease Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo, who has said in the past that teachers have identified a way to generate “a list of vendors” from the financial system. HUSD Administration seems to believe differently. “If we need to ask our labor partners how to do it, please do,” he said. “I don’t understand why this request has been so challenging.”
Superintendent Wu-Fernandez said that contracts were included in a budget forum in May, but not specifically pulled out. After repeating Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo repeated his request again, Superintendent Wu-Fernandez said, “That’s what we’re working on.” It is unclear why, if the process is so complicated, nobody in District Administration has explained the complications to Trustee Bruckner-Carrillo.
No Real Surprises
Trustee Rawdon wasn’t excited about the budget, but said, “There’s not really any surprises to me.” This is a stark difference from January when a $30,000,000 overrun in Special Education took the Board by surprise. However, he also pointed out that the state budget isn’t looking as favorable as they’d like. “It’s not as rosy as we’d hoped.”
The Board has received budget updates multiple times during public meetings in the last few months, which may have helped with reducing the surprise.
Trustee Rawdon then asked about the assumptions for high-need students and if Staff thought they would increase even more. “These numbers are quite high,” Staff said. They pointed out that there are few districts in the entire state with numbers so high, which means there’s not much more up to go.
What Are Our Contingencies?
Trustee Oquenda asked what the plan was if the Trump Administration started making good on promises to target California. “I just hope that we are preparing a contingency plan for if the threats related t cutting out funding to California from the federal government.”
Staff said that the Federal government doesn’t add a huge amount to the District budget. “The primary contingency that we have is to restore these ending fund reserves,” she said.
Trustee Oquenda clarified that her concern was more about the Federal Government cutting funding to the State of California, and then the State redirecting funds away from Education. Staff said that Prop 98 requires the State Budget to allocate 40% to K-12 education. “That does create a fair bit of stability for education,” she said.
Have You Tried Finding Money?
Trustee Prada asked if the District had looked at other forms of investment and grants. “We’re very close to Silicon Valley,” she said, “and there have been investments that have been given to districts before.” Superintendent Wu-Fernandez said that the District is exploring relationships with Foundations, including Fremont Bank, to support funding. She also pointed out that many grants already fund supplemental services in the District.
Trustee Prada suggested that Staff keep some kind of record of grant opportunities. “A spreadsheet with all of this and a timeline on it,” she suggested. “I kind of need something a bit more tangible.” She said she had asked for a Grant department of some kind in the past that could consistently look for funding opportunities. “So that we don’t find ourselves in such a deeply negative position.”
She said that it was important to have the infrastructure in place to help support opportunities as they come up. She said that Southgate is apparently applying for $3,600,000 grant and did not want them to miss out on it.