School Board to Discuss Next Steps After Measure O
The agenda for Wednesday's San Bruno Park School District board meeting also includes discussions about next year's budget and possible teacher layoffs.
Photos
Pdfs
With the failure of Measure O in the November election, the San Bruno Park School District has been forced to go back to the drawing board to figure out how to pay for a number of capital projects that were on its wish list.
To figure out its next steps, the school board will hear a presentation about lessons learned from the last election from polling firm Dale Scott & Company at the Wednesday board meeting.
According to the board meeting packet, the presentation will focus on the voter turnout for the election and how residents throughout the city voted on the bond measure, which failed to pass after getting only 50 percent of the votes. Measure O needed 55 percent of the vote.
In addition, the board will be discussing several issues that could affect next year’s budget, including a school transportation bill that would possibly eliminate 50 percent of the district’s transportation funding and the governor’s recent proposal to eliminate the requirement for school districts to offer a transitional kindergarten program—meaning the district would be left to foot the bill for its program next year.
The board will also be discussing possible teacher cuts. A proposal is currently on the table to eliminate the equivalent of 15 teaching positions next year—13 elementary school positions and two from Parkside Intermediate—because the district won’t be able to support its current level of staff beyond this school year.
The proposal doesn’t necessarily mean teachers will lose their jobs. The board has until March 15 to make a final decision about layoffs.
The school board meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at Portola Elementary School.
For more news about San Bruno, follow San Bruno Patch on Twitter and "like" us on Facebook. Got Patch in your inbox? Sign up for our newsletter.
Bill Baker
7:59 pm on Tuesday, February 7, 2012
HaHa. Dale Scott & Company is back? Dale Scott & Company; self advertised "political election and campaign advisors". Last year around this time Dale Scott said that their phone survey of 800 "likely voters" in the SBPSD showed strong support for a bond measure & a parcel tax with approximately 70% voter support:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48937867/11EDITION
If Dale Scott & Company had selected a different set of 800 "likely voters" in the SBPSD they could also have come up with a result showing that 70% of SBPSD voters opposed a bond or parcel tax measure. At the end of the day, in politics, the only poll that counts is the poll taken on election day.
This is the same Dale Scott & Company that provided campaign & political advice to the Yes on Measure O campaign that raised somewhere between $37,000 and $100,000, flooded mailboxes in San Bruno with junk fliers & blanketed our streets with their amateurish campaign signs. The Yes on Measure O supporters still couldn't get 51% of the votes in the Measure O election requiring 55% voter approval.
The 1 lesson a political pollster should take away from San Bruno's failed Measure O and F campaigns is that in San Bruno there is almost no correlation between telephone polls and election results. As I see it, one of the big lessons learned from the failed Measure O campaign is that Dale Scott & Company isn't the company you want to be taking political advice from as far as political campaigns in San Bruno are concerned.