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Larkspur-Corte Madera School District |
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Dear LCMSD Community,
I hope this reaches you after a nice and relaxing mid-winter break. As a district, we are now in the planning phase for next year. With that in mind, at the March 8th Board Meeting I am going to be recommending a change to the Hall Middle School schedule to begin in 2023-24.
During the 2011-12 school year a committee was formed to explore the possibility of implementing a seven period day at Hall Middle School. At the time, Hall was implementing a six period schedule where students received English, math, science, history, physical education, and one elective. They researched other local district practices to see how some schools provided two electives. What they found was that while a seven period day created more elective opportunities for students, it was also very costly. Schools that had implemented such a model, were considered “deep” basic aid, meaning that their property taxes generated much more funding than districts such as LCMSD. Despite the committee recommendation that a seven period day wasn’t fiscally feasible, there was significant community interest to offer such a program; therefore, the district decided to stretch itself and implement a seven period day in 2013-14.
Over the past nine years, we have offered the seven period day for Hall students and have consistently been challenged by our ongoing deficit budgeting. Our actions to address this have been implementing hiring freezes (2020), temporarily reassigning staff (2020-2021), strategically using one-time funding (2020-2023), seeking out grants, and making cuts to other services/programming such as our 2019 reductions of close to $1 million. Despite these actions, we still find ourselves in a deficit budgeting pattern. Additionally, over the past nine years, we’ve watched compensation for all employee groups slip to the bottom quarter in the county. This has resulted in unfilled positions and a lack of competitive salary to attract and retain teachers and staff.
Throughout the years we’ve provided many opportunities for parent, community, and staff input via the Fiscal Advisory Committee, Town Hall Meetings, Board Budget Study Sessions, coffee chats, and staff meetings. The sustainability of the seven period day has come up year over year; however, actions that I described above were used to try and preserve this program.
Ultimately we are at a place where the seven period day is no longer sustainable. Therefore, beginning in 2023-24, Hall will go back to the six period day schedule with one elective instead of two. The Hall Middle School start or end time might be adjusted by up to 15 minutes. Please know we have done our very best to try and keep this program in place and this decision comes with a heavy heart.
If you would like to discuss this change that will be going to the Board on March 8, we are providing a coffee chat for all LCMSD parents on March 3 at 8:30 am in the Hall Library. The coffee chat will also be live streamed via Zoom (link; passcode - lcmsd). Additionally, Dr. Brown has scheduled the following parent nights to explain student options in detail:
Thank you in advance for your understanding and support of LCMSD schools.
Dr. Brett Geithman Superintendent |
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Board of Trustees Annie Sherman, President Eric Schmautz, Vice President Amir Movafaghi, Clerk Beth Blair Natalie Medved |
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