DJUSD Long Term Funding Challenges

A Day Decade Late, A Dollar $,$$$,$$$ Short

With the threat of massive cuts to schools from the state budget, the already horrible fiscal health of the the Davis Joint Unified School District just took a roundhouse to the head that would make Chuck Norris proud.

The Davis Voice has kept you in the loop on a couple of DJUSD issues that face this community (see DJUSD category to the left), but until now, we’ve been light on offering suggestions for improvement.

After the jump, find two proposals that will do nothing to ensure that music classes aren’t cut next year BUT will give DJUSD the safety net it so direly needs.  And, no, neither proposal includes using Chuck Norris’ tears to instantly solve the problem… Chuck Norris has never cried.

Whatever the School Board and DJUSD Superintendent do in the short-term to try and staunch the bleeding in the current crisis, one hopes against hope that they finally get on the ball with using existing
assets to grow an endowment that could be used to ameliorate future  funding needs. It seems senseless to let so many empty parcels the District owns throughout Davis lie fallow year after year without
realizing any benefit to the school system.

A prime example is the Grande site, which will never be used for a school. Albeit it has its charms as de facto open space, after 30-plus years one might think it is high time the District made use of the site for something.

Rather than just sell the site, for a one-time profit which must be spent only on capital improvements per the terms of the Naylor Act, if DJUSD retained an interest in the project (e.g.,  allowing a developer a 99-year lease on the underlying property in exchange for a share of the revenue stream from the final project) it could bank the money earned into an operating endowment.

So why not cobble together a partnership with a developer to build senior housing, or a hospice, or limited-equity homes for DJUSD employees a la Aggie Village at the Grande site?

And it isn’t only empty lots that lend themselves to such reuse: now that Valley Oak is shuttered, why not move the District offices there, and create a partnership for a high-density, mixed-use project on the high-value location of the current DJUSD offices at 5th and B St.?

How about a live-work-retail project, with two-story condos facing the residential areas on C St and 6th St, respectively, retail on the ground floor facing 5th St., and an entrance off of B St. to second (and/or third) floor commercial offices above the retail space facing Central Park on 5th St.?

Agreed, this won’t solve DJUSD’s present fiscal meltdown – but then, neither will selling Nugget Fields, or any other District-owned real estate.

But co-partnership with commercial builders does offer a way to gain an ongoing revenue stream, which could be used to build an endowment independent of local tax monies and per-diem repayments by the State to enhance our school programs in good years and buffer them from shortfalls in lean times.

The DJUSD must take the long view to protect the integrity of public schools in our community.