On Monday and Tuesday next week, the board of the San Diego Unified School District will hold its two-day workshop to discuss key, and contentious, issues concerning the governance of the school system. Here is a preview:
- As we reported last month, the board will take another look at the budget it hastily approved in June. Potential things on the cutting block: a Mission Bay ROTC program; Superintendent Carl Cohn’s proposed truancy-prevention center; several dozen landscape custodians.
- The board is expected to discuss a proposed bond measure to go on the November 2008 ballot. Conversations at the district’s Proposition MM Independent Citizens’ Advisory Committee suggest that the bond will be between $1.6 billion and $2 billion and help pay for an estimated $600 million deferred maintenance backlog.
- In closed session, the board will consider what to do with Chief Administrative Officer José Betancourt, who last week pleaded guilty to violating a federal lobbying law for his work for a defense contractor. Betancourt also never disclosed his work for the contractor and one of its affiliates on the annual statements of economic interest state law says he must file with the district.