The Abridged version:
- Last week, the Sacramento City Unified school board unanimously approved spending up to $400,000 on consultants to help with the district’s multi-million-dollar budget crisis.
- A representative from the Sacramento County Office of Education the next day pulled the plug, calling the decision “inconsistent with the district’s recovery.”
- One board member condemned the decision on social media. In his post, he criticized the district’s top budget official, Lisa Grant-Dawson, who said she did not take his words personally.
Sacramento City Unified School District will not be able to hire outside help to get out of a $170 million budget crisis.
That’s according to a fiscal adviser from the Sacramento County Office of Education, who has been assisting the district since the start of the year. Due to Sacramento City Unified’s precarious financial position, the county office has authority to override any decision it feels would worsen the situation.
According to Luz Cázares, county advisor, that includes spending up to $400,000 on three consultants from HYA, an education financial firm.
She said the district provided an ambiguous financial justification for hiring the consultants and did not use due diligence, “as other contractors were not considered to ensure competitiveness.”
School board members had unanimously approved hiring the consultants during a special board meeting the day before.
Board member blames district staff
Trustee Taylor Kayatta lamented the county’s decision on social media over the weekend.
“The Sac City school board does not like contracts,” Kayatta wrote. “We have been clear about that: services and supports for our students should be provided by district staff whenever possible.”
“I want to be frank,” he went on to say in his post. “The Board sought to contract with HYA first and foremost because our interim CBO (Lisa) Grant-Dawson has not been meeting Board expectations.”
Lisa Grant-Dawson has served as the district’s top budget official since January. She was brought in, at the invitation of former Superintendent Lisa Allen she said, to help after the previous chief business officer left in November.
Grant-Dawson said she does not take Kayatta’s words online personally.
“I don’t know how to respond to that other than that’s the work,” she told Abridged.
More and more ‘bad news’
Kayatta, in his Facebook post, took issue with what he called a series of “bad news” presentations by Grant-Dawson at board meetings.
The district’s recent budget woes first came to light in September. The threat of running out of cash and an ensuing state bailout has loomed over Sacramento City Unified for most of the school year.
In her first address to the board in January, Grant-Dawson cast doubt on the district’s current recovery plan. Several proposed measures would not save as much money as originally thought or would be difficult to implement, she told trustees.
The outlook has appeared to worsen with each week and board meeting. The anticipated budget deficit now sits at about $170 million.
“The Board has tasked Ms. Grant-Dawson to act, but she has not done so,” Kayatta wrote online. “We asked for solutions to improve our budget, but she has focused her public presentations on bad news.”
Grant-Dawson, who previously worked for Oakland Unified, said she first had to learn the depth of the trouble in Sacramento. A full diagnosis, she said, takes time.
“If the expectation was that I was going to come in and find $200 million…” Grant-Dawson said. “I can’t develop a solution until I understand the problem.”
Savannah Kuchar is a reporter covering education. She came to Sacramento to be a part of the Abridged team and contribute to a crucial local news source.