|
With millions of dollars of upgrades needed at Tracy schools, TUSD is considering another bond for this fall's ballot. Plus, high school boundaries are presented, and a trustee retires.
Consultants presented a few options about how to finance as much as $68 million for elementary and middle school improvements at the Tracy Unified School District board meeting Tuesday night.
After determining earlier this year that the district actually needs $200 million to supply local schools with state-of-the-art technology, remodeling and maintenance, Keeling, Northcross and Nobriga financial advisers honed in on strategies for coming up with at least part of that money.
That likely means issuing another bond, consultant Charlie Feinstein said Tuesday night.
The board took no action on the subject — the presentation was just a briefing — and trustees must now consider whether to drum up public support for a bond measure that could appear on the November 2008 ballot.
If the board decides to endorse a new bond, it will have to vote in favor of that by June or July, Feinstein said, because the San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters Office needs the proposal by August if the measure is to appear on this year’s Nov. 4 ballot.
High school boundaries
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, Casey Goodall, assistant superintendent of business services, presented the revised high school attendance boundaries to accommodate the under-construction John C. Kimball High School, scheduled to open in fall 2009.
After a series of meetings to collect public input, one of the most significant changes to the boundary plan, he said, is that students who have siblings attending a given high school will transfer there, too, despite the boundary lines.
He called boundary plans presented earlier this year "gerrymandering at its worst" and said the newest plans even out attendance at Tracy, West and Kimball high schools.
"The boundaries are fairly contiguous," he said, pointing out the decided separations. He said the only complicated borders converge at the map’s center, east and west of Tracy Boulevard.
The main things the committee considered, Goodall said, were whether younger siblings would get to follow their older brothers and sisters to the same high school, how to accommodate the overwhelming number of requests for transfers to Tracy High School and how to district new development to feed the student population into Kimball High.
Students from the future Tracy Hills development will all attend Kimball, Goodall said. So will all high school-age Mountain House residents, at least until it has a high school of its own, as Lammersville School District plans to form its own unified school district.
Up for public comment, too, were the negotiations for a new year-long contract with the Tracy Educators Association, the district’s teachers union, though it had not been presented by press time.
Resignation announced
Joan Feller, a school board trustee of 15 years, announced through a written letter her resignation, effective immediately, due to illness.
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
All of the stipulations of Measure E were met, or are in the process of being met. I find it sad that Joe hates children so much, and that he would rather have teenagers turn to drugs, crime, murder, and counterfieting, than help give our schools what is needed to meet the educational needs of our kids. The schools are underfunded, and I have to in part blame Joe and his ever growing organization. If you are out there and thinking of joining a club, please don't join Joe's club. Think of the kids, (by kids I mean children to young adults, not goats). 
