Tracy Press

The Tracy Unified School District finds a temporary hire for one of its top administrative positions and recaps spending of Measure E bond money.

Trustees brought a familiar face back to the Tracy Unified School District on Tuesday to replace former Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources James Mousalimas, who took a job with the San Joaquin County Office of Education at the end of the most recent school year.

Ray Strong, who preceded Mousalimas and retired from the TUSD position in 2005, will work as interim assistant human resources superintendent until the district hires a permanent replacement, trustees decided at the first school board meeting of the new school year Tuesday night.

Since 10-year district employee Mousalimas left, the district has struggled to find someone to fill his shoes.

Strong, trustees agreed, will more than tide the district over with his experience in the role and his familiarity with the people he’ll work alongside.

As a retiree, Strong is limited to an income no higher than $30,000 annually.

Strong’s new start comes at a time of tremendous growth for the district in terms of construction, curriculum and an ever-burgeoning student population.

Today marks both the first day of the new school year and the first day some students will take classes in Tracy High School’s partially finished two-story classroom and office building.

Students and teachers will moved into the building’s first story today and into its second story in October, when construction on that floor wraps up.

In addition to a report on progress at the building that now stands in place of the demolished West Building, trustees were brought up to date at Tuesday night’s board meeting on all the completed, soon-to-be completed and soon-to-be started construction throughout the district.

Workers are pouring the foundation for what will be the district’s third traditional high school — John C. Kimball High School — Facilities Director Denise Wakefield told trustees with the aid of a photo slide show.

The high school, set to open to students a year from now, faces a $2.1 million shortfall, Wakefield announced. That’s in part, she said, because of a lawsuit over condemned land between the district and a property owner.

Wakefield recapped in a separate slideshow all the completed construction paid for by the $51 million Measure E bond that voters approved in 2006 — a swimming pool, stadium and field at Tracy High, to name some.

This coming year, what’s left of the voter-approved debt will pay for two new buildings at Tracy High and a new theater at West High.

Plans for the West High theater will go before the board on Sept. 24. If approved, contractors will break ground in October.

During the summer, the school spent $140,000 on two new school buses — an expense trustees retroactively approved Tuesday night. They also voted to give the district the go-ahead to buy two more busses to transport special education students and keep up with the growing number of students who live in the far corner of the district’s boundaries.

Fueling the expanded fleet will cost the district $15,000 more per year, upping the total annual price tag for fuel to $60,000 for all buses.

Also presented Tuesday night was a plan to include Tracy students’ immunization records in an eight-county database to track medical histories for especially homeless, uninsured or displaced kids.

The plan would cost the district nothing more than what it costs to access the Internet, the speaker said, because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays the county to keep up the database.

The speaker said the consolidated information is useful in case of an emergency like a natural disaster, if a student loses health insurance or if they move to another district and need to prove they’ve had their shots.

Whether to include Tracy students in the registry will be up for a vote at the next board meeting Aug. 26, staff decided.

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written by truthteller , August 13, 2008

"presented Tuesday night was a plan to include Tracy students’ immunization records in an eight-county database to track medical histories for especially homeless, uninsured or displaced kids."

i understand that the county will pay for the records to be updated, but WHO will be hired to enter all this data and ensure that the personal items in those files remain confidental? will the county supply a person that they will pay to enter the data? will the district hire someone to do this, then charge the county? or will like most times someone who already works for the district and is overworked have the information piled on their desk and not recieve any extra pay for the extra work and the district just pockets that money and spends it on catered lunches for the select few?