By Kathleen Acuff

Libraries at Los Altos elementary and middle schools can now stay open all day for students’ use, playing fields will soon be groomed by a gardener and principals will buy some of the supplies on their lists, thanks to the unanimous vote of the three trustees present at the Los Altos School District board meeting last week. A less-than-unanimous vote would have referred any agenda item to a second round of voting by the full board at the Oct. 10 meeting.

The $200,000 allocated for necessities emerged from the closed financial books at the end of June. Of that sum, $75,000 will restore full-time staffing of the libraries, $75,000 will reinstate the gardener’s position with salary and benefits and $50,000 will buy paper, pencils, non-textbook instructional materials and books, custodial supplies for eight schools and continued use of their copiers. When balancing the budget for this year last June, trustees cut the entire $100,000 budgeted for school supplies.

The $200,000 surplus from last year and the $54,000 in extra funding from the state, reported earlier this month, are keeping the district’s budget reserves around 3.5 percent, “comfortably above” the state-mandated 3 percent, said Randy Kenyon, assistant superintendent for business services.

Kenyon and the Citizens Advisory Committee for Finance predict reserves will grow over the next few years as a result of increases in property taxes.

Library aides

Boettcher said the reinstatement of the library aides was effective immediately after the board’s decision.

“Only a couple of aides will actually be hired,” she said. “In most cases, it is a question of either reinstating the deleted 25 percent of the person’s hours or shifting the funding from the potential PTA support back to the district.”

Sherry Hakes, a library aide at Almond, said early this week that students did not lose any library services this year, because the district’s libraries opened, as usual, about two weeks after the start of school. The libraries are staffed by aides, assisted by volunteers, from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, she said.

Hakes, who is also president of the California Schools Employees Association (CSEA), the union for all district employees who are not credentialed teachers or administrators, said that paid employees such as aides must be present before volunteers can be brought in to help. Before the layoff of support staff three years ago, the district employed more than 200. The number of support staff now is about 160, Hakes said.

Gardener

“None of the gardening work should have been done after the gardener was laid off, but for safety reasons the CSEA has allowed the maintenance department to mow,” Hakes said. “The rest of the (gardener’s) work has gone undone because it is contractually illegal for anyone else to do it.”

The support staff’s union contract makes it illegal to hire replacements for employees who are laid off, “so we have been waiting to reinstate the gardener,” Hakes explained.

Cleaning the schools

“Many districts do that now, but we’ll go back to every day when we can,” Superintendent Tim Justus said. He said that staff would find out what the “industry standard” is before discussing funding for maintenance in next year’s budget.

PONY sheds at Covington

“Covington is the last frontier for space,” said Ed Mussman, member emeritus of the league. Three sheds are scheduled to be built this year and two next year.