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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Office of Education reported Tuesday that recently announced mid-year state budget cuts include massive and unequalled reductions to much-needed transportation funds for rural and small school districts.
As a result, Lake County Superintendent of Schools Wally Holbrook said Lake County school districts are again preparing to deal with more reductions to funding for education and schools.
This time, however, the proposed cuts are in the middle of the budget year, lack specificity and are based on disproportionate funding allocations for school districts that provide necessary but not mandated transportation, he said.
Holbrook said the Lake County schools revenue limit funding per-student has been reduced over the last five years by approximately $1,300 per-student, and local schools are now preparing for an additional $13.10 per student mid-year reduction.
In addition, transportation funding will be reduced by 51.5 percent, which Holbrook said will result in a loss of approximately $875,000 to Lake County schools.
The mid-year cuts in transportation raise many issues for Lake County’s schools, Holbrook said.
Lake County schools and parents rely heavily on home to school transportation – in the form of school buses – to get their children to school, Holbrook said. Due to the county’s geography and walking distances to school, a higher percentage of local students ride the bus.
While home to school transportation is not a state-mandated program, Holbrook said it is a critical service ensuring that students attend school on a regular basis, and average daily attendance (ADA) is the primary determiner for school funding. Simply discontinuing school transportation service is not a viable solution for Lake County schools.
Another issue raised is the apparent lack of fairness in how the reductions in transportation funds will be calculated, according to Holbrook.
The 51.5-percent reduction is planned to be applied in January to a decades-old base-funding appropriation that varies from district to district. Holbrook said the result of this approach will be a disproportionate reduction of dollars on a per-student basis.
According to the chart below, total Lake County reductions per-student will range from a low of $60 per-student to a high of $157, Holbrook said.
In addition, state transportation funds allocated to Lake County schools already have been reduced and do not fully cover the cost of providing transportation, Holbrook said.
In 2011-12 Lake County school transportation entitlements have been reduced by $435,000, thereby requiring local school districts to allocate more than $1,803,000 of scarce regular education dollars to maintain the current level of service, he said.
As an example, Kelseyville Unified School District’s initial transportation allotment was $442,359 and was reduced to $354,616 in July, Holbrook said. Now that allocation will be reduced again by 51.5 percent, leaving just $171,989 as the state funded amount.
Kelseyville’s regular education budget will now need to fund $277,230 of the total transportation costs, which Holbrook said amounts to $449,219.
Lastly, Holbrook said the timeline for implementation of mid-year reductions is problematic.
Schools cannot simply reduce personnel costs, he said.
Most, if not all, school districts are subject to collective bargaining agreements requiring them to adhere to strict procedures for notification and communication related to reducing staff, Holbrook said. In order to fairly and efficiently implement any reductions in staff, a minimum of 60 to 90 days is required, thereby reducing the potential savings in the remaining school year.
While it may be overly optimistic to expect that education would be held harmless from future cuts until the budget stabilizes, the reductions could be applied in a more equitable fashion, he said.
The same dollars generated in the 51.5 percent reduction to transportation could be achieved by a statewide “across the board” reduction of $42 per student, Holbrook suggested.
Holbrook is encouraging local parents to consider contacting Lake County’s state legislators to encourage them to quickly address this issue.
“Together we can make a difference,” Holbrook said.
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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Fog and icy road conditions resulted in county road workers and California Highway Patrol officers keeping an eye on the Nice-Lucerne Cutoff on Tuesday.
A thick morning fog came off Clear Lake in that area of the Northshore, resulting in icy roads, said Lake County Road Superintendent Steve Stangland.
“We didn’t have any accidents to our knowledge,” said Stangland.
Stangland said the Nice-Lucerne Cutoff is the busiest of the roads that Lake County maintains, and his staff gives it extra attention as a result.
A county sand truck on Tuesday spent part of the day sanding the cutoff, and the CHP set out flares to warn drivers of icy areas, Stangland said.
Stangland said the county has three road districts, each of which has a staff member who starts work at 4 a.m. – ahead of commuter traffic – to monitor areas like the cutoff, Bottle Rock Road and Point Lakeview Road for ice, downed trees and other road hazards.
With the fog lifting, Stangland said he’s not anticipating Wednesday to replicate Tuesday’s icy conditions.
The National Weather Service is predicting chances of showers increasing through the end of the week.
Stangland said the cloud cover and chance of rain will mean slightly warmer temperatures and less chance of icy roadways.
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The corporation said it hasn’t yet determined which stores will be closed.
"Given our performance and the difficult economic environment, especially for big-ticket items, we intend to implement a series of actions to reduce on-going expenses, adjust our asset base, and accelerate the transformation of our business model,” said Chief Executive Officer Lou D'Ambrosio. “These actions will better enable us to focus our investments on serving our customers and members through integrated retail – at the store, online and in the home.”
The corporation reported that it operates 1,307 Kmart stores across 49 states, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and 890 full-line Sears stores.
There are no full-line Sears stores in the Lake County area, with the closest being in Santa Rosa, according to the Sears Web site.
However, the corporation Web site showed there are “hometown stores” – not reported to be slated for closure – in Lakeport and Clearlake. Lakeport also is home to a Kmart.
The proposed closures are expected to generate $140 to $170 million of cash as the net inventory in these stores is sold, along with additional cash proceeds from the sale or sublease of the related store real estate, the corporation said.
Sears Holdings Corp. said it expects to reduce its 2012 peak domestic inventory by $300 million from the 2011 level of $10.2 billion as a result of cost decreases in apparel, tighter buys and a lower inventory position at the beginning of the fiscal year.
The Tuesday report attributed Kmart's sales decline to decreases in the consumer electronics and apparel categories and lower layaway sales, while Sears’ declines were primarily driven by the consumer electronics and home appliance categories, with apparel sales flat and Lands' End in Sears stores up by mid-single digits.
D'Ambrosio said the corporation plans to take several specific actions to improve its situation, including focusing on improving gross profit dollars through better inventory management and more targeted pricing and promotion; reducing fixed costs by $100 to $200 million; and carefully evaluating store performance going forward.
“While our past practice has been to keep marginally performing stores open while we worked to improve their performance, we no longer believe that to be the appropriate action in this environment,” the corporation said in its Tuesday statement. “We intend to accentuate our focus and resources to our better performing stores with the goal of converting their customer experience into a world-class integrated retail experience.”
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In October 2010, Harris filed a lawsuit against 10 companies for engaging in price fixing of LCD panels from 1999 to 2006 that resulted in higher prices for California residents and businesses, as well as government agencies.
Tuesday’s settlements resolve Attorney General Harris' claims against seven companies, along with those of seven other attorneys general and a national class action.
As part of the settlements, the companies that engaged in price fixing will provide a fund for consumers and businesses in 25 states, including California.
The settling companies also have resolved claims brought by Attorney General Harris for civil penalties under California's Unfair Competition Law, as well as restitution for government agencies that purchased the flat screen LCD panels.
Attorney General Harris is joined in these settlements by the attorneys general of Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, New York, West Virginia and Wisconsin, as well as a class action brought on behalf of private claimants in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Settling defendants include: Chimei Innolux Corp., Chi Mei Optoelectronics USA, Inc., Chi Mei Optoelectronics Japan Co., Ltd, HannStar Display Corp., Hitachi, Ltd., Hitachi Displays, Ltd., Hitachi Electronic Devices, USA, Inc., Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd., Samsung Electronics America, Inc., Samsung Semiconductor, Inc., Sharp Corp. and Sharp Electronics Corp.
The California case was originally filed in San Francisco Superior Court, where litigation continues against AU Optronics Corp., AU Optronics Corp. America, Inc., LG Display Co. Ltd., LG Display America Inc., Toshiba Corp., Toshiba Mobile Display Co. Ltd. and Toshiba America Electronics Components Inc.
In 2008, two companies – LG Display Co., Ltd. and LG Display America, Inc. – pleaded guilty to federal charges for price fixing TFT-LCD panels and paid $400 million in federal fines. Defendants AU Optronics Corp. and AU Optronics Corp. America, along with several employees, have been indicted on federal charges of price fixing.
The criminal trial is scheduled for January 2012 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
California consumers and government entities will receive a significant portion of the more than $500 million settlement, with an exact percentage to be determined later.
Following completion of the litigation, California consumers and businesses can file claims for monetary relief.
Information about how to file a claim will be available at the Attorney General's Web site at www.oag.ca.gov or by calling 800-952-5225.
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The study, published this week in the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that even small oil spills can have a large impact on marine life, and that common chemical analyses of oil spills may be inadequate.
"Our research represents a change in the paradigm for oil spill research and detecting oil spill effects in an urbanized estuary," said Gary Cherr, director of the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory and a study co-author.
On the foggy morning of Nov. 7, 2007, when the container ship collided with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, bunker oil contaminated spawning habitats for the largest U.S. coastal population of Pacific herring – a month before spawning season.
The new study, which analyzed Pacific herring embryos following the spill, highlights the effects of bunker oil on fish embryos in shallow water, the potential significance of sunlight interacting with oil compounds, and the extreme vulnerability of fish in early life stages to spilled oil.
Specifically, the study found that components of Cosco Busan bunker oil accumulated in naturally spawned herring embryos, then interacted with sunlight during low tides to kill the embryos.
Laboratory fertilized eggs, caged in deeper waters, were protected from the lethal combination of sunlight and oil, but still showed less severe abnormalities associated with oil exposure.
Crude oil is naturally occurring, liquid petroleum. Bunker oil is a thick fuel oil distilled from crude oil and burned on ships to fuel their engines. It is contaminated with various, sometimes unknown, substances.
The study builds on research following the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, which released up to 32 million gallons of crude oil into the comparatively pristine environment of Prince William Sound, Alaska.
That research established a new paradigm for understanding the effects of oil toxicity on fish at early life stages.
The new study suggests that this old paradigm is inadequate to explain the dramatic, lethal effects of very low levels of oil on fish embryos, even in an urban estuary with preexisting background pollution.
"Based on our previous understanding of the effects of oil on embryonic fish, we didn't think there was enough oil from the Cosco Busan spill to cause this much damage," Cherr said. "And we didn't expect that the ultraviolet light would dramatically increase toxicity in the actual environment, as we might observe in controlled laboratory experiments."
Researchers began the new study in February 2008. They analyzed the levels of oil-based compounds in caged herring embryos at four oiled and two non-oiled subtidal sites, all of which were at least 1 meter below the water's surface. Naturally spawned embryos from shallower sites were also analyzed.
Three months after the spill, caged embryos at oiled sites showed nonlethal heart defects typical of oil exposure.
But embryos from the shallower, intertidal zone not only exhibited the nonlethal heart defects, they also showed surprisingly high rates of dead tissue and mortality unrelated to heart defects.
"These embryos were literally falling apart with high rates of mortality," said Cherr.
In 2008, almost no live larvae hatched from the natural spawn collected from oiled sites.
The high death rates did not seem to be caused by natural or manmade causes unrelated to the spill, the researchers report. No toxicity was observed in embryos from unoiled sites, even those near major highways.
Embryos sampled two years later from oiled sites showed modest heart defects but no increased death rates.
Pacific herring is a commercially and ecologically important species. The fish travel in large schools, typically from the San Francisco Bay north to the Bering Sea, and serve as a forage fish for humpback whales, other mammals, birds and salmon. After two years at sea, they spawn in shallow areas of bays and estuaries.
"In San Francisco, herring is one of the last urban fisheries, and herring is an indicator for the health of the Bay," said Cherr.
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