Watsonville

Pajaro Valley teachers, who have been fighting for a binding arbitration clause in their contract, show no signs of giving up the struggle.

Some three dozen teachers rallied Thursday morning  in front of district headquarters on Green Valley Road in advance of a negotiating session with a mediator.

Negotiators for district management and the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers reached impasse in May. Teachers say they were promised the binding arbitration issue would be settled before negotiations started for the 2009-10 school year and they have refused to talk about the pay and benefit concessions the district seeks to alleviate its severe cash crunch.

The district, which will resume classes for the new school year in three weeks, needs a settlement. After making $14 million in budget cuts in March, the district is facing another $7.5 million deficit due to reduced state education spending. It’s hard to see how more cuts can be made without cutting spending on compensation.

The mediation session was scheduled to run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today.

WATSONVILLE — In what could only be called the freakish of accidents, a Ford pickup drove itself into two buildings on Walker Street about 12:45 p.m. Tuesday.
No one was injured.
The truck’s owner had parked the pickup around the corner on West Lake Avenue, but left it running while he dashed into George’s Liquors for a soda. While he was gone, the automatic transmission somehow moved into reverse, and the truck backed itself across the street and into the Central Electric building at Walker and West Lake. The jolt apparently knocked the transmission into drive and the truck headed south on Walker before plowing into the nearby liquor store.
“I was in the store paying and I heard the noise,” said the truck’s owner, who declined to give his name. “I came out and said ‘that’s my truck.’”
The pickup smashed a window and crushed part of the wall at the front of the store. Owner Gu Hee Chang said she and two customers were inside at the time of the crash. It was scary, she said.
Damage to the Central Electric building was minor.
Watsonville police officer Rus Orlandos told the driver to get the transmission checked. It’s very loose, he said.

One-time federal money could keep libraries open in Pajaro Valley elementary schools next year.

The libraries fell victim to the district’s budget crisis and are  slated to be shuttered.

But Assistant Superintendent Ylda Nogueda laid out a plan Tuesday that would use  Title I funding — cash devoted to helping underprivileged students — to pay for libraries in the Watsonville area. Aptos area schools would be funded with money set aside for what became a failed effort to negotiate a reduction of hours rather than elimination of staff.

The one-time funding would keep the libraries open for one year only.

But the school board hasn’t approved the plan to restore libraries, and at least one trustee is wondering whether the money instead could reverse other decisions, such as the one that increases kindergarten and third-grade class sizes.

“I think we should at least have that conversation,” said trustee Sandra Nichols.

Nearly 100 city workers — mostly police officers, firefighters and top managers — earned more than $100,000 in 2008.

But the majority of the city’s 603 employees earned less than Santa Cruz County’s 2008 median family income of $79,900. About half earned less than $50,000, including many who worked part time, according to city payroll records.

A story about the records will appear in Wednesday’s print edition.

The records are available now in a searchable database on the Sentinel’s Web site.

The $167 million budget approved by the Pajaro Valley school board late Wednesday night keeps the district in the black for the coming year as long as state legislators don’t do anything unexpected to close the state’s unprecedented $24 billion shortfall.

But the 4-3 vote was hardly a ringing endorsement for the spending plan, which will squeeze more children into kindergarten and third-grade classrooms, shutter elementary school libraries and end or reduce spending on everything from student health and athletics to campus maintenance and administration, not to mention leaving  more than 250 people witout jobs.

Even at that, the district’s financial troubles are hardly over. As Barney Finlay, the County Office of Education chief business official,  noted the 2009-10 school year budget relies on one-time federal money and leaves the 2010-11 budget $7.5 million in the hole, a gap the district must start addressing immediately.  By state law, school district budgets, which are overseen by the county education offices, must be in the black three years out.

Trustees Doug Keegan, Sandra Nichols and Karen Osmundson voted against the budget. Keegan said he wouldn’t support any budget that closed elementary school libraries. Nichols, who proposed cutting salaries on a tier system that would take more from higher paid administrators, wanted to take another look at increased class sizes in kindergarten and third grade.

Did you take this photograph of last June’s Trabing Fire?

The smoke from the 2008 Trabing Fire was visible for miles.

The photograph was submitted to the Sentinel last year. If you are the photographer,  please contact Donna Jones at 763-4505.

Hundreds of Pajaro Valley residents have signed a petition expressing “no confidence” in five school board members, according to organizers of the signature drive.

The petition says President Leslie De Rose, Vice President Libby Wilson and trustees Willie Yahiro, Doug Keegan and Kim Turley have failed  “to live up to the mission of the school district” and have shown a “lack of leadership and creativity during this budget crisis.”

The board majority voted to cut $14 million from next year’s budget, a move that will cost more than 400  teachers and support staff their jobs. The cuts were necessary because of reductions in state funding.

But petitioners want more reductions to administration, including revamping the geographic zone management system and eliminating at least one of the district’s four assistant superintendents. The cuts have hit the classroom too hard, they say.

Management has argued regardless of the structure all four assistants would be needed to carry out administrative functions, particularly as other jobs are cut at the district office.

The Pajaro Valley Education Coalition, which circulated the petition, plans to deliver the signatures to the board Wednesday. The group plans to hold a press conference  at 6:30 p.m.  at the district office, 292 Green Valley Road, in advance of the board meeting. The board will meet at 7 p.m.