A BID FOR OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE
	APRIL 2004

by J. Douglas Adams
Photos by Brad Shifflett

California public schools are in trouble.The past two-and-a-half years have seen a 25% drop in funding for classrooms. During this time California dropped from 25th to 48th in the rank order of state funding per student. Only Mississippi and Alabama are below us in this ranking.

Things are even worse for Brentwood schools than you might imagine from these grim statistics. The Brentwood School District is classified as a low-wealth district. As a result we receive fewer dollars per student than 17 of the other 18 school districts in Contra Costa County.

The reason for Brentwood School’s low classification is that in 1974 California’s Proposition 13 established a base per-student revenue rate that remains in effect to date.

COPING WITH GROWTH AND DECLINE
It is no secret that Brentwood has undergone some remarkable changes in the three decades since the low-wealth classification was laid on us. We are no longer the agrarian community that we were at that time. The tremendous commercial, industrial, and residential development that has taken place has created the gross inequities in funding that we are now forced to deal with.

Our problems are made even worse by the reality that ours is the fastest growing school district in California, with an annual growth of 15 percent. That means by the year 2011 Brentwood will have 60,000 residents and about 10,000 students in K through 8th grade.

The fact that the state is currently reducing its support for public schools is only making our bad situation even worse. In particular, our library allocation per student has gone through the basement. The allocation dropped from $10 per student to a mere $2 per student.

Two bucks per student for library books is almost the same as nothing. The last time I checked, comic books cost over three dollars each. The average price per textbook has increased to $20. It is difficult to understand how a state could reduce funding for library books to this level.

The rule of thumb is that you need 15 copies of some library books. We are forced to be inefficient in order to be effective at this point. For example, in February a lot of students will want to check out books about George Washington, even though by the end of the month the books will probably be sitting unused on the shelves, where they will remain until next February.

I’ve been part of the Brentwood school district for 15 years. I remember in 1991 pulling out a library book that made the claim, “We’re trying to put a man on the moon.” My disdain about that book has motivated me ever since. I make random visits to school libraries and check the appropriateness of books I find there. There’s no point in keeping worthless volumes on a library shelf just to provide an illusion that the library is sufficiently stocked with books.

MY BRENTWOOD ROOTS
I attended school in Brentwood myself. My mom taught in the school district for over 30 years and retired to Somerset, where she still resides. I began teaching in Pleasanton and eventually rose to the position of Assistant Superintendent in Martinez. In 1991 I received the call to become Superintendent of Brentwood Schools, replacing Bill Bristow who had served as superintendent for 24 years.

I just realized that Bill and I together have served in this post for the past 38 years. Our combined terms in this job extend back to the Kennedy administration.

Our tenure is pretty remarkable considering that the average term for a school superintendent in California is only about four years. The truth is that Brentwood treats people differently than do most communities. When I began there were only 1,600 students divided among three schools. Brentwood was a sleepy agricultural community. There was a distinct small-town feeling about this place.

Ours was always wonderful school district to work in. Even back in those early days people cared about schools and were active in their support of the people who taught their kids. Now there are 6,000 students in seven schools, with three more currently under construction.

Even though the changes in the Brentwood School District would seem almost unimaginable to somebody living here 1991, there still remains a small-town flavor about this area. Local residents continue to serve enthusiastically to make our school district work.

THE BOTHERSOME BUSINESS OF BOOKS
One of our three new schools is Pioneer Elementary School, near the new Slatton Ranch shopping center off Lone Tree. Four hundred students will attend in the first year. The number will grow quickly to 700. The school will open this year and the state has not yet provided a single dollar for library acquisition. We certainly don’t want to borrow books from libraries in other schools, thus depleting their already meager supply, which is running below recommended levels. Action on the local level is clearly called for.

The main way that local citizens are leaping into action in response to the challenges of under-funded libraries is through a nonprofit organization called the Brentwood Union School District Education Foundation. This foundation is providing a great service to our schools even though some of the board members on the foundation and many of its most staunch supporters don’t even have children in school any longer.

Pete Petrovich, for example, is a City Council Member who just walked in one day. ”I would like to help. I like the idea of raising money for library books.“ Pete is now a member of the Board for the foundation and is wonderfully active in all parts of the program. He is working hard on the project even though he has no school-age children himself.

If “it takes a village to raise a child,” then Pete knows, as we all do, that all the kids are our own kids. Many of our volunteers, as well, no longer have children in attendance. They are happy to give back to the school something in return for the education that their children, in some cases they themselves, received in Brentwood classrooms.

COMING TOGETHER TO EAT, DRINK, AND HELP
The Foundation sponsors a single fundraising activity, an annual wine-tasting dinner, to be held this year on April 23. This is a happy time for everyone who attends. Local restaurants provide various food stations so people are able to walk around sampling food from each one. Local wineries and wineries from Napa provide wine tastings and donate bottles and cases of wine for the auction that follows.

We have been putting on the foundation dinner since 1991, adding the wine tasting in 1993. Proceeds in the early days went for student scholarship. In 1995 our growth jumped from three percent to seven percent per year. Meanwhile, the foundation was taking in only about $10,000 a year.

When it became obvious that the State was going to ratchet down the amount given for library books in the face of our tremendous growth, Sara Tamayo had the vision to take this auction to the next level and begin to designate the money we raised to our local school libraries.

Sara enlisted local support from such people as Kelli Nunn, Leslie Hancock, Isaac Montanez, Monica Martin, and other volunteers from the community, most of them with no students in our school. They began reaching out to local restaurants and wineries. The excitement began to catch on and the number of volunteers began to increase. Sara also ventured into Napa and recruited gifts from people like Francis Ford Coppla and the Selser Foundation (get list from Sara). Foundation revenues jumped to more than $60,000 per year.

Two years ago the event raised nearly $80,000, which was a record-breaker for a one-night charity fund raising event in our city. All proceeds go towards the purchase of library books. Many of these will to fill up the empty library shelves in the new Pioneer school, but participants can designate contributions to go to any school they desire.

HELPING OUR KIDS WHILE HELPING OURSELVES
A number of people participate in the dinner and auction for purely selfish reasons. It’s just a lot of fun. Even though the money goes to a good cause, some participants are simply attracted by the opportunity to get a great bottle of wine, perhaps for a great price — and receive a deduction for next April’s taxes to boot. Some of them don’t even care that their purchase price will help buy books for knowledge-thirsty people.

A lot of people participate because they really want to help us, of course, and have really caught the vision of what we are trying to do. Everyone can understand the essential role that reading materials play in the lives of young students. A donation of $80, translates to four library books. Each book donated through this program has the doner’s name stamped on the inside of the front cover. I think that’s a cool little extra payoff for people who participate in the program.

I’m looking forward to April 23. We always have a great time at these things. I urge you to show up and share the fun with us. You can be making a bid for the future of our children when you make a bid for that great bottle of wine.

Brentwood really is different than many other cities. People who live here are glad, for the most part, to participate in activities that help make the community a better place to live. Our need for schoolbooks for the young learners in our school is critical. This wonderful dinner and the auction is inspiring. Watching the response of people in the community to challenges like this is heartwarming.

This is a good community to live in; it is a great place to serve as a school superintendent!

NOTE: The winetasting dinner will begin at 6 p.m. at Bunkers Grill, Brentwood. Contact Gayle Crockett for reservations. 925-513-6349.