Good schools deserve a board that shows its work.

When our kids needed more help, this district hired it: counselors, psychologists and social workers went from 12 to 20 in two years. That was the right call. I'd have voted for it.

Hiring is the easy part. Twenty people are now in one of the hardest jobs here. Many of them are new and their caseloads, mentoring, and onboarding have never once come to this board for discussion or review. In eight years of agendas, the only items that even touch those words are program purchases and a few individual pay items, nearly all on consent. We buy professional development every year; it has come back to an agenda for review once since 2021.

Every 2025-26 raise in the district took effect the same day: July 1, 2025. The difference is when each one was approved. The superintendent's contract amendment: June 9, 2025 — three weeks before the school year began. The teachers' new salary schedule: approved March 26, 2026, eight and a half months into the school year. The classified staff — aides, office staff, custodians — waited until April 16, 2026.

Retroactive pay is normal — bargaining takes time. But the impact wasn't abstract: teachers worked for eight and a half months of the school year on the old salary schedule — aides and custodians three weeks longer. The back pay arrived but the waiting was real and it wasn't shared by everyone. Bargaining explains the wait. It doesn't explain the order — the order is a priority and priorities are what a board sets.

I'd put a workforce report in open session once a year — one evening focused on the people side: staffing and vacancies, caseloads, turnover, onboarding. The board has heard twenty-four briefings on its bond program; the people doing the work deserve at least one night a year.

The buildings are well served — over $4 million in Measure EE work is landing at Del Aire Elementary now. When parents asked to join the principal search at Del Aire Elementary, the district did it right: a survey, a community meeting, and a parent back at the podium to say thank you. That's this board at its best.

The same campus lost its counselor, a speech therapist, and its principal. No small change at a school of 596 kids running, like every Wiseburn Unified elementary school, on a single administrator. More than thirty staff arrived in the same window. Every move bundled into one vote. If the board ever weighed any of it, the written record doesn't show it.

When the community asks, this board can choose to respond. The principal search proved that. What the record never shows is the board prioritizing people on its own without being asked. Staffing deserves what the buildings get without anyone having to show up: an agenda item, a discussion, and a recorded why.

The 2026-27 budget names exactly one school for staffing reductions: Del Aire Elementary "contingent on continued enrollment trends" while the district's own projection holds flat. The budget says the board may adjust that plan at the First Interim, scheduled in December, the month the new board is seated.

I'm not promising positions. I'm promising the question. State law already puts that budget review on the December agenda. I will be asking why.

Here's what the eight-year record shows:

In eight years and 4,508 votes, this board has never voted down a contract, an agreement or a purchase. It has voted something down four times — every one an employee asking for leave or a reduced schedule. Nearly half of everything passes bundled on consent. The problem isn't the yes votes — it's that the record never shows the why.

The district's savings account nearly doubled to $13.5 million by 2023, then fell back to $7.5 million. The plan is to keep spending more than comes in for the next three years. Wiseburn isn't broke. It keeps the state's required minimum reserve every year and its own projection shows the deficit narrowing to about $64,000 by 2028-29. This timeline leaves no margin: unassigned reserves — the money with no strings on it — fall from $2.8 million to about $276,000 by 2029, a 90% drawdown on the district's own numbers. A plan that spends the whole buffer works only if every assumption holds. One of those assumptions is the Del Aire Elementary staffing plan. They call the drawdown intentional, and I'll take them at their word. I just can't find the meeting where anyone walked through, in public, which cuts close the gap, what was assumed, or what we can do if the assumptions don't hold.

The annual financial audit and two straight years of Measure EE bond audits had zero findings. An audit tests whether the rules were followed, not whether anyone asked hard questions. The Sports Complex is a real gift to this community — lights, three fields, a place for Little League and AYSO that we were promised for years. We earned it. The decisions behind it were outsourced. In March 2023 the board hired a bond program manager, gave staff standing authority to buy without bidding, and approved every recommendation after that. Synthetic turf was decided on a slide in June 2023 before an architect was hired. The budget went from $8 million to about $17.5 million. Bleachers were added three weeks before the ribbon cutting. I can't find the meeting where anyone asked what grass would cost or asked the neighbors what they wanted before the design was set. Before the next field, I'd want that number in public, as an agenda item, with parents in the room.