10/14/25 BOE Meeting Notes
With a large number of union representatives demonstrating outside the board meeting related to strike threats from both UESF and UASF, the meeting itself ran more smoothly than expected. During public comment we heard from a number of UASF principals, continuing to make a strong case for compensation commensurate with the increased workload. The most concerning comment we heard was from the New Traditions principal, who highlighted that site admins have not been brought into any major decision-making processes by the district, from Frontline adoption to the nursing cohort model and more. Just like families need to be brought into these major decisionmaking processes sooner, so do our school leaders and teachers.
Approval of the Unaudited Financial Reports (Presentation Found here)
New Deputy Superintendent of Business Services and Operations, Chris Mount-Benites, took the board through the ”2024-25 Unaudited Actuals Presentation with Budget to Actual Variance Analysis.” In layman’s terms: “How much did we spend in the end compared to the plan?” Mount-Benites very clearly explained what could otherwise be dense material, with the following takeaways:
- A healthy variance between budget and actuals should be 10% or less
- When comparing Actuals to Budget, then 1st and 2nd Interims (e.g. in slide 4), variance should decrease from wave to wave
- SFUSD budgeting has been not good…. in that the variance INCREASED over time
- The budget added things we didn’t spend, which shows lack of fiscal control
- The Actual deficit was $38M ($1.242B minus $1,279B), per Slide 5
- Slide 8 shows the large variance caused by vacancies ($50M+)
- TL;DR: SFUSD needs to get better at budgeting
The Board of Education understandably asked why the variance was so bad. Mount-Benites identified that the key culprits were a) staff turnover and b) bad budgeting (taking old budget & tweaking, rather than working up from actual needs / system data). Now that he’s on staff, his plan to improve variance to less than 10% in the next 1-2 years includes:
- Teaching his people how to budget
- Teaching them how to manage a budget
- Not rolling budgets over
Other key takeaways:
- We will have a better understanding of cost escalations after November close
- Mount-Benites just hired a Position Control staffperson who will vet every position on the books and confirm which of the vacancies are “true vacancies” to reduce related variance
- With a large deficit, we should first get our budget more accurate, then plan for raises ahead of time (rather than use ‘vacancy variance money to pay for raises, as some commissioners suggested)
- The district should have a reserve policy (apparently it has none)
- The state recommends that the district consistently invest into a Calpers OPEB (Other Post-Employment Benefits) to cover that $640M liability so that it is eventually fully-funded and does not need to be covered by the General Fund
The Board Voted 7-0 to approve the fiscal close packet with all the associated forms.
Inclusive Decision-Making Framework (Board Governance) (Memo found here. Types of Board Decisions found here)
President Kim and VP Huling are working on clarifying roles of the board and superintendent on district decision making – per the linked memo above:
“As we continue our focus on student outcomes and effective governance, it is important that the
Board and Superintendent have clarity on the types of decisions the Board makes and the role
of the Board in the decision-making process. During the October 14 Board meeting, we will
have an initial discussion to define the types of decisions made by the Board.”.
President Kim presented the “Types of Board Decisions” table linked above, and while there was general buy-in, the main sticking point seems to be around Major Initiatives:
- Commissioner Alexander echoed that we need clarity on board responsibility, for example, he felt the closure of Academy felt like a board decision/vote since strategic
- Commissioner Kim gave the example of Vision 2027 / Progress Monitoring as Board Work, balancing the budget as Superintendent (board still approves)
- “Major Initiatives” is inherently broad
- Commissioner Weissman-Ward noted that no one on the board knows how to stay in their lane, herself included, and that each of them would push for certain issues to be major initiatives, and asked about flexibility built into the framework
- President Kim responded that they built in space for exceptions, and used the word “should” intentionally to allow some flexibility
- There was some discussion about the level of community engagement for each type of decision
- Next Step: the 10/28/25 meeting will have more specificity around what the types of decisions might be
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