Is Newsom giving schools only a trickle of Rainy Day money? And more news...

February 26, 6:54 PMSF Education ExaminerCaroline Grannan

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When Mayor Newsom announced that the school district would get a share of the city’s Rainy Day Fund – money set aside in better economic days to use when hard times come – it was announced as a great boon to the schools.

But actually, the   Chronicle story   about the funding indicates that Newsom may be finagling to provide the schools with as little as possible.

The mayor said the city will qualify this year for a share of the money - up to 50 percent of the $92 million now in the fund. Then, depending on how the law is interpreted by the city controller, the school district could be eligible only for 25 percent of what's left, Newsom said. That would give the district $11.5 million - just half the $23 million it would get if its share was calculated from the full $92 million.
Newsom said the $11.5 million was just a minimum and could go up, but he would not commit Tuesday to providing more even if the controller allows.

This touched off some angry reaction on the  Parents for Public Schools  members’ discussion list, where one parent posted:

Is this how a wanna-be governor partners with his constituents and especially our public schools (and springing it on everyone at the last minute)? I'm not sure of the chess game being played, but Newsom made a wrong move.

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In the current budget crisis, advocates for children’s programs and other essential community services have been calling for rooting out cronyism and bloat from City Hall. It appears that some inside sources have been sending information to BeyondChron’s Randy Shaw, who has written   here  and  here  about city positions whose value is open to question in tough times.

One position that came up on those lists is a city-funded post that actually works in the school district, with the job title Sustainability Coordinator. David Assmann, deputy director of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment, sent BeyondChron a  response  after Shaw included the Sustainability Coordinator on a list of possible examples of staff bloat.

Assmann's first point was:

“… it's clear already that the School District will save many times the cost of [the position’s] salary. One project alone, a retrofit of the Rosa Parks School, has brought in $250,000 of outside funding.”

But actually, the $250,000 environmental retrofit of Rosa Parks Elementary was the   prize   in a contest, the Green Schools Initiative, sponsored by a company called EcoMedia and CBS Corp.

According to the Department of the Environment’s own  press release,  it was a video made by Rosa Parks students that won the prize:

Rosa Parks won the San Francisco contest by submitting a clever video showing how much students have bought into composting, recycling, planting and power savings on campus.

Since the kids made the winning video, it seems a bit low to imply that the credit should go to an adult who had nothing to do with it.  Also, the Sustainability Coordinator position hadn’t been filled yet when the award was announced, allocating  $250,000 to be awarded to a San Francisco school (the question being which one).

I was going to say that Mr. Assmann must have been confused when he credited the Sustainability Coordinator with securing that $250,000, except that if you read his letter closely, you can see that he doesn’t specifically give the Sustainability Coordinator the credit – he just mentions the award, implying that the credit should be given, without making any actual connection. A little sneaky, are we?

**
 

Margaret Brodkin, whom Mayor Newsom recently and unceremoniously removed from her post as director of City Hall’s Department of Children, Youth and Their Families, was honored by the San Francisco Organizing Project with a Community Builder Award. The Bay Guardian’s Rebecca Bowe blogs about it  here:

A little more than a month after Mayor Gavin Newsom asked former Department of Children, Youth and their Families director Margaret Brodkin to step down from her post, community support for her work is still very much in place. At an annual fundraising event called Soul of the City, hosted by the San Francisco Organizing Project on Feb. 23, Brodkin was honored with a Community Builder Award.

Brodkin, who is currently serving as director of the New Day for Learning Initiative, a project aimed at galvanizing efforts for a more just and comprehensive educational system in the city, thanked the crowd who had gathered at a Mission District restaurant for the Soul of the City celebration. But she also expressed disappointment about being removed from her position at DCYF, which she was appointed to in 2004.

“I lost a job that I was very devoted to and felt I’d lived a lifetime to do,” she said. On the day that she was asked to step down, the mayor’s office issued a press release to put a good face on it, but Coleman Advocates for Children & Youth worried that her dismissal set the stage for a “possible raid, erosion, or elimination of the children’s fund and other critical services for our kids and families.”

**

A press release showed up recently from a Culver City public relations agency promoting  Revolution Foods,  a vendor that provides school meals and bills its cuisine as healthier and fresher than the competition's. SFUSD Student Nutrition officials have talked business with Revolution, but it's pricier than other vendors and so far hasn’t been able to bring its prices low enough to be affordable to our cash-strapped school food program. (The district is also bound by law to do business with the low bidder.)

Revolution's press release listed nutritional information that it portrayed as representative of current school meals but that actually badly misrepresented the nutrition content in SFUSD meals (showing considerably higher calories, fat and sodium).

The press release in essence accused SFUSD of violating mandated National School Lunch Program standards, which is a serious charge that could lead to a manpower-draining audit and (if violations were found) costly penalties.

I called the PR woman, and she was sincerely chagrined and extremely apologetic. She says she did the research herself and got the nutritional figures from a website about school food – not an official source and not specifically about SFUSD at all – and she was unaware that implicitly accusing a school district of violating NSLP requirements is a serious thing. (The press release also stated that Revolution Foods’ meals are no costlier than “unhealthy” ones -- but as noted, they actually cost more than the more-traditional vendors’ products.)

The PR woman promised to send out a release correcting the information. Basically, she had no idea that she was on such delicate ground. However, I assume that Revolution Foods approved the press release, and its principals should know better.

It’s interesting that private firms trying to win business from school districts tend to make their sales pitches by bashing and disparaging their prospective clients. Would vendors approach a prospective client in the private sector with that kind of pitch? Do other public agencies get that kind of treatment from prospective clients too, or are school districts unique? Strange way to do business.

Anyway, the bottom line here is that Revolution Foods is too expensive for SFUSD to do business with. Most of its non-private customers are reportedly charter schools, which generally have more money thanks to the private philanthropy they receive.