FAIRFIELD — The response to the Solano
County grand jury report about a $128,900 contract with a Texas consulting
company won approval Thursday by Fairfield-Suisun School District trustees –
one of whom said he was disappointed by the lack of transparency in how
Fairfield-Suisun had dealt with the grand jury report.
The June 18 report asks for a response by
the school board, but Trustee Chris Wilson said Fairfield-Suisun administrator
wrote the reply the school district submitted July 20 and that board members
were now taking up at the meeting.
Wilson said the grand jury asked for a
response from the governing board.
Superintendent Kris Corey said the clerk
for the grand jury had told the school district that it wasn’t necessary for
school board members to respond.
Trustee Pat Shamansky, in a written
question, asked about a state law requiring that the governing board formally
approve written responses before they are submitted to the grand jury.
The school district staff answered that
state law requires comment by the governing body of the public agency within 90
days, but that the law is silent about how comment occurs and that the grand
jury in the past has accepted responses by agencies rather than governing
boards.
“In this case, to prevent any question
about the response, staff is bringing forward the response for approval by the
governing board,” Fairfield-Suisun administrator Sheila McCabe said.
A school board subcommittee will be asked
to develop a policy clarifying responses to future grand jury reports, McCabe
said.
The grand jury in its June 18 report said
professional development programs like Capturing Kids Hearts by the Texas-based
Flippen Group, which promotes “positive school and district cultures,” should
be vetted before committing public funds so that the program is compatible with
the school district.
While no school district employee who
attended a Capturing Kids Heart conference reported negatively about it,
“overall they had difficulty articulating exactly what they learned from it, if
anything,” the grand jury report said.
The Fairfield-Suisun School District’s
response, which the school board approved unanimously Thursday, includes the
statement that the district “has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to
fiscal responsibility.”
“There is no question,” according to the
school district, that Capturing Kids Hearts has had a “positive impact on our
learning community.”
Suisun City resident George Guynn Jr., the
only member of the public to comment, asked at Thursday’s meeting that the
school board “listen to what the grand jury said” about the $128,900 consulting
contract.
“It’s very easy to spend somebody else’s
money,” Guynn said. “When it’s wasted, it’s gone.”
He spoke about attending school board
meetings since 1997 and said this is the first time the governing board didn’t
submit the response to a grand jury report.
“It seems to me this one really slipped
through the cracks,” Guynn said.
David Isom, president of the school board,
said, “We don’t have anything to hide.”
He described the Fairfield-Suisun School
District as a nonprofit corporation with a large number of employees and a
significant budget.
“We are going to make some mistakes,” he
said.
Trustee Judi Honeychurch praised the
great job she said McCabe did in writing the response to the grand jury.
Shamansky said the school district decided
to hire the Flippen Group consultant to provide professional development with
Capturing Kids Hearts.
“It’s about helping our students,” she
said.
Corey described the program as providing
professional development for more than 150 school district staff members.
“It really has been a positive experience,”
she said.
September 11, 2015
Daily
Republic
By
Ryan McCarthy
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