Updates & Information

Important Message From the
San Mateo County Director of Health

The Health System is working with all community partners and healthcare
providers to ensure the County is ready to face the new flu season. This
flu season will be much more complex than previous years with the
arrival of the H1N1 (swine) flu. It is therefore important for everyone
to stay informed and take steps to help lessen the effects of the flu on
our community.

Schools educators and staff can play an invaluable role in helping to
prepare for, and prevent the spread of the flu by reviewing and sharing
the following information and guidance:

1. Vaccines: There are two types of flu shots this year and both
are very important. The seasonal flu vaccine is available now and it’s
recommended that everyone over the age of six months get vaccinated as
soon as possible. The H1N1 (swine) flu vaccine is not yet available,
though it is expected to begin arriving later this fall. All vaccines
will be given primarily by people’s healthcare providers, as well as
distributed through flu clinics located throughout the County. For
updated information on vaccine availability and a full listing of
vaccine clinics, visit the Health System’s website at
www.smhealth.org/swineflu and click on “Vaccines”. You can also
get updates and clinic information from the County Flu Hotline at (650)
573-3927.

2. County Flu Website: The Health System has a new Flu Website
designed to provide easy access to timely and accurate information.
There is a section with guidance specifically for schools which will be
updated with new information such as vaccine availability and school
closings. Visit www.smhealth.org/swineflu and click on “Guidance for
Specific Groups.”

3. New Flu Brochure: “What’s New with the Flu” is a new
County educational piece available in four languages, English, Spanish,
Chinese, and Tagalog. You can view and download the brochure at
www.smhealth.org/flubrochure. You can also order brochures free of
charge by contacting the Health System at pmachado@co.sanmateo.ca.us or
call (650) 573-3726. Please include the quantity you need by language
and where to ship them. You can also download flyers and posters from
the Centers for Disease Control and the California Department of Public
Health. Visit www.smhealth.org/swineflu and click on “Helpful
Materials” for a full listing.

4. Health Tips: To help prevent the spread of both seasonal and
H1N1 (swine) flu, please urge your students, teachers, staff, and
parents to:
* Get a flu shot
* Cover coughs and sneezes with a tissue or sleeve
* Wash hands often with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand cleaner
* Stay home when sick

Thank you for your efforts and commitment to the health and well-being
of our children and the community.

Brian Zamora
Director of Health
San Mateo County Health System

Email sent from the Superintendent
Regarding the Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy
May 28, 2009

Update on Lehman Brothers Recovery Efforts

Click here for a printable summary of the three main efforts under way to maximize school districts' recovery of losses sustained in the Lehman Brothers collapse. The summary was prepared by county counsel for all public school districts in our county.

Thank you to all who wrote to elected officials and the treasury department in support of the TARP hearings on Lehman. This "surge" has had a positive effect as evidenced by the increased interest at the hearing and the continuing work being done on this effort. We owe a lot of thanks to Congresswomen Speier and Eshoo and to Senator Feinstein.

/Eric

Email sent from the Superintendent
Regarding Swine Flu Outbreak & Lehman/TARP Hearings
May 1, 2009

Dear Parents,

I hate to inundate your email with daily updates, but indeed these are "interesting" times.

On the Lehman / TARP hearings scheduled for next Tuesday in Washington D.C., many parents have written and sent letters, and many more have asked for more specific guidance as to the letter itself. I have attached a sample letter that was put together by one of our district's most skilled wordsmiths. Use or modify as needed.

Regarding the swine flu epidemic, I have attached an update that is current as of this morning. In the event that any confirmed cases of swine flu occur in our district, I will be contacting you by way of email and through SMS (texting) on the cell phone number that you have provided to us.
Thank you, and have a great weekend.

Yours,
Eric Hartwig
Superintendent

attachments:
May 1 Update to Parents pdf
May 1 Template to Treasury pdf
May 1 Template to Treasury doc

Email sent from the Superintendent

Regarding the Request for Letters of Support

May 1, 2008

Dear LLESD Parents and Staff:

Over the months I've kept you apprised about our various efforts to recoup the $400,000 that our district lost when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. I am now writing to ask your help in a way that has a real chance of being effective.

Thanks to the combined efforts of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswomen Anna Eshoo and Jackie Speier, the House Financial Services Committee, Chaired by Congressman Barney Frank, will conduct a hearing on using TARP funds to purchase Lehman bonds from municipalities and districts that held them at the time of the bankruptcy. Originally scheduled for May 21, the hearing has been moved up to Tuesday May 5, 2009, in Washington, DC.

This is a very promising approach and is testimony to the skill and commitment of Senator Feinstein and Congresswomen Eshoo and Speier. For a short video of Mrs. Eshoo in action on this topic, click on the link below.

http://mattortega.com/video/CSPAN_01-14-2009_18.40.36.wmv

We need letters of support from around the country to be sent to the Treasury . The dollars lost are your taxes which were intended to provide services for our school children, and it is totally appropriate that TARP funds be used to restore these funds to their intended use. Attached please find sample letters and other information compiled by Deputy County Manager Mary McMillan who is coordinating this issue for our county.

When you read these materials, you will see that this approach is extremely timely and promising. I know that the time is short, but a show of support could have a strong impact. Even if your letters arrive after the hearing, they will help influence the decision.

Letters to Treasury should be addressed to the following:

The Honorable Timothy Geithner
Secretary of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20220

And copied to:

Mr. Herbert Allison, Jr.
Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability
Department of Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20220

Mr. Michael Tae
Director of Investments
Office of Financial Stability
Department of Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20220

Thank you very much,


Eric Hartwig
Superintendent

attachments:
TuolumneCounty_Speier_SupLetter-1.pdf
Accounting of Lehman Loss by Agency.pdf
Impact of Lehman Loss on SM County.pdf
Follow up letter to Treasury on Lehman Lossesfor CA 12.22.08.pdf

Email sent from the Superintendent
Regarding Swine Flu Outbreak
April 28, 2009

Dear Parents,

Please read this new information (attached) concerning swine flu.

Sincerely,

Eric Hartwig
Superintendent

attachments:
FAQs_swineflu_CDCadapted2.pdf,
FAQs_swineflu_CDCadapted_SPANISH.pdf,
ParentLetter_swineflu2.pdf ,
ParentLetter_swineflu2_SPANISH_042709.pdf

Email sent from the Superintendent 
Regarding Swine Flu Outbreak
April 27, 2009

• If your children are sick, keep them at home. Do not send them to school.
  
  
• Teach your children to wash their hands frequently with soap and water for 20 seconds. Be sure to set a good example by doing this yourself.
  
  
•  Teach your children to cover coughs and sneezes with tissues or by coughing into the inside of the elbow. Be sure to set a good example by doing this yourself.
  
  
• Teach your children to stay at least three feet away from people who are sick.  
  
  
• People who are sick should stay home from work or school and avoid other people until they are better.

Update on District Financial Issues
from the Superintendent 
February 23, 2009
printable version

    

Dear Parents,

I am writing this update on our district’s finances knowing full well that the situation continues to be quite fluid and that our position will surely evolve as the months pass. Indeed, for the past several weeks I have hoped that the federal stimulus and the state budget would be resolved definitively and that I could give you information that is more than merely speculative. Now that the stimulus package is law and the California budget is passed, it is now a question of learning the exact details and provisions; this information will surely trickle in over the next few weeks.

I can now make some general statements on several topics with some degree of confidence, with the goal of helping our families and staff members understand the likely impacts on our district.

The State Budget: State budget was resolved with a combination of expenditure cuts, creative bookkeeping, borrowing, and new revenues. To ease the pain of these cuts, the legislature allowed a certain amount of flexibility in our management of different funds.

For our planning purposes, we have been using some “worst case” and “worse case” scenarios and inserting them into this year’s and next year’s budget. These scenarios estimate that amount of “equal pain” give-backs that our district is likely to be liable for in order to match the cuts that will be felt by the revenue limit districts in our state. At this time, it is unclear how much “equal pain” is expected of basic aid districts, but the good news is that we will be able to weather a “worst case” scenario for the next 18 months without having to make reductions in staffing. This makes us quite unique among most districts in the state and is due mainly to our history of very conservative and responsible budget management.

However, we will have to be very diligent in our staffing decisions for the coming year and will do our best to accommodate modest enrollment growth without adding additional teachers. One of the “flexibilities” that is likely to emerge from the State budget resolution is the ability to exceed class size caps at the K-3 level; if this happens, we could see some classes at 21 or 22 pupils for the next year or two at Las Lomitas. Similarly, at La Entrada we will see fewer very small classes and we may see more classes increase slightly over what we’ve grown accustomed to. 

Property Taxes: As a basic aid district, we do not receive additional funding for additional students. Our district has been able to keep up with enrollment growth over the past ten years because property taxes also grew during an extended period of appreciation in real estate values and property turnover. Over the past decade we experienced property tax revenue growth in the 6%-8% range, but the current year will be the last “high growth” year we’ll see for some time (and this year’s figure has been greatly offset by the Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy and the projected take-aways mentioned above).

The County Assessor’s Office is showing that revenues for next year will increase by 4% at best but could be significantly less. Approximately 3% revenue growth is required for our district to stay even with growth in fixed costs such as energy, benefits, and insurance and with salary increases due to increased years of service (teachers and support staff). Absent a dramatic turnaround in current trends,  is clear that we are approaching a point where we will have to consider program or staffing cuts for the 2010-11 school year.

Federal Stimulus Package: For all the brouhaha, the federal package is not likely to stimulate our district very much. The first half of the package, the part that is supposed to come directly to the district from the federal government, looked at one time to amount to a little over $250,000 over two years.  However, a recent interpretation by the California Department of Finance indicates that basic aid districts will not be eligible for the special education (IDEA) portion of that money. For us, that means our share of the first half of the “stimulus” will be about $50,000.

The second half of the stimulus package that effects education will flow through the state and will be allocated to local school districts and higher education using existing funding formulas, which can be used to backfill cuts, prevent layoffs and modernize schools as well as other purposes. These funds will go to the Governor of each state to determine how they will be spent, but the California Legislature will also be involved.

Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy: Last September, our district took a $400,000 hit as part of the $155,000,000 loss suffered by the San Mateo County Investment Pool. We have booked that loss (fortunately, again, our prudent budgeting provided sufficient reserves to cushion that blow) and now are awaiting resolution on several fronts. One is whether we can (and should) sell our portion of the bonds, which are currently valued at 13-14 cents on the dollar – about $56,000 to us. Another avenue of recovery is being pursued through legislation sponsored by Senator Feinstein and Congresswoman Speier where, if passed, Treasury Secretary Geithner would be directed to purchase with TARP funds Lehman (and other notes) from municipalities and school districts that were hurt by the bankruptcy. Some observers are optimistic about this approach. The county itself is actively revising its investment policy to assure that members of the investment pool aren’t vulnerable again.

Conclusion: The fiscal landscape for our district is as volatile and uncertain as it has ever been. Our status as a basic aid district has, until now, protected us somewhat from the harshest swings in school funding. Our rental income from Phillips Brooks and Woodland Schools and the generous grant provided each year by the Las Lomitas Education Foundation have enabled us to maintain our extraordinary programs over the years, but I am certain that at best we are going to be very challenged in the years to come. For the short term, our prescient planning over many years and careful budgeting for the coming year will enable us to absorb the funding cuts as they are currently predicted, but the picture could be quite different for the following years.

I will update staff and families again after our state budget is ratified, trailing legislation is written, and the implications to our district are known.

Thank you,

Eric Hartwig
Superintendent

Message from the Superintendent 
Regarding the Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy 
November 12, 2008

    

Dear Parents,

Thank you SO much for your instant interest in participating in the letter-writing campaign to have our school district be eligible for federal bailout funds under TARP. Keep the letters coming!

Many of you asked about email, an option I didn't include because there is no way to send email directly to our legislators; you must go to each website and paste your letter into their "input" form. For those of you who are inclined to do this, the websites are listed below.

Also, some of you have noted that the link to the district website, where I've posted some background information about the Lehman failure and the county investment pool, wasn't active. I'm including it again, but make sure your browser is set to read HTML, or cut and paste the address into your broswer:  http://www.llesd.k12.ca.us/superintendent.html

Finally, I am including my original email requesting your help, and the sample letter you may use or modify is again attached to this email. Thank you so much.

Eric Hartwig
Superintendent

  _____________________
  Anna Eshoo
  http://eshoo.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=447&Itemid=
  

Dianne Feinstein
  http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUS.EmailMe
  

Nancy Pelosi
  http://speaker.house.gov/contact/
  

Barbara Boxer
  http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/email/policy.cfm
 

Jackie  Speier
 http://speier.house.gov/IMA/issue_subscribe.shtml
            

Message from the Superintendent 
Regarding the Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy 
November 12, 2008

Dear Parents,

As I'm sure you know through reading the local papers and my updates in the Leopard's Spot and the Lion's Roar, LLESD is aggressively seeking relief for our district's huge loss that resulted from the collapse of Lehman Brothers. If you haven't seen my updates, you can view them by clicking here.

I am writing to ask you to help with a county-wide letter-writing campaign that is aimed at securing federal government help in recovering our district's share ($397,000) of the $37 million that the county's K-12 schools lost.

Congresswoman Anna Eshoo is actively seeking help for schools through a section of the $700 million federal bailout bill known as TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program). There is a good chance that we can be successful in this appeal, but we have to act quickly and decisively.

Please write to Congresswoman Eshoo and let her know that you are strongly supporting her efforts to find relief for the public schools that lost money because of the Lehman bankruptcy. I have attached a sample letter, but I encourage you to modify or personalize it as you see appropriate.

Please also send copies to the additional legislators listed below. Time is of the essence; thank you very much for your support.

Eric Hartwig
Superintendent
Las Lomitas School District


____________________

Mail as follows:

Honorable Anna Eshoo
14th Congressional District
District Office
698 Emerson Street
Palo Alto, CA 94301

Copy to:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Office of the Speaker
H-232, US Capitol
Washington, DC 20515

Senator Dianne Feinstein
One Post Street, Suite 2450
San Francisco, CA  94104

Senator Barbara Boxer
1700 Montgomery Street
Suite 240
San Francisco, CA  94111

Congresswoman Jackie Speier
400 S. El Camino Real
San Mateo, CA  94402

 Message from the Superintendent 
Regarding the Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy 
October 3, 2008

Dear Parents,

I am writing this note to update our families on the impact on our district of the bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers. As many of you know, the County Investment Pool held about $150 million in Lehman paper when bankruptcy was declared. What is probably not well known is that all public entities in our county, including school districts, are required to deposit their operating cash and proceeds from parcel taxes and bond sales into this account. Thus, all school districts and municipalities were affected by the bankruptcy to the extent that their deposits were a percent of the total deposits.

Fortunately for our district, we did not have large deposits from bond sales or other incomes, but we did have about $6 million on deposit, making our probable loss close to $320,000. While this is a fraction of what other districts lost, it is a very significant amount, and we will be working vigorously to recover our share of any settlement.

Las Lomitas School District has benefited from many years of prudent fiscal management, and last spring our Board of Trustees enacted a comprehensive policy on fiscal reserves that is now being implemented. These reserves are identified for several important contingencies such as technology, building, deferred maintenance, Basic Aid fluctuations, retiree health benefits, and the ever-present economic uncertainty.

As a result, we will be able to absorb this loss due to the Lehman bankruptcy with no disruption to our current school operations. In effect, our reserves provided precisely the protection they're intended to. We will, however, have to adjust our future spending and savings plans to account for this loss.

I will be participating in a county-level steering committee to press for an equitable recovery plan for districts and to effect a thorough analysis of any other potential liabilities to depositors in the fund. We will also be seeking a higher level of accountability at the county level so that this sort of thing does not happen again.

If there are further developments in this situation, I will keep you informed.

Thank you,

Eric Hartwig
Superintendent

An Update on the County Investment Pool

Dear Parents,

A month ago I wrote to you about our first reactions to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, which led to a loss of about $155 million to the County Investment Pool. I would like to update you about the status of that situation and the impact on our district.

The loss to our district, originally estimated to be about $320,000 has now been calculated to be $396,737. (Loss to all the county’s K-12 schools totaled over $37 million.) About $178,000 of our loss has been charged against our general operating fund, and the rest to various restricted funds and reserve accounts. As I mentioned a month ago, while this is a very significant loss, our sound balance sheet and very prudent budgeting will enable us to weather this loss without having to reduce or eliminate programs.

I am currently serving on a sub-committee that is conducting an investigation and seeking relief for the 23 school districts in our county. The San Mateo Community College District and the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors are also seeking relief, conducting investigations, and pressing for reforms in the way the County Investment Pool conducts its business.

We have met with County Treasurer Lee Buffington to get answers to many of the technical and procedural questions that we have and have recommended improvements to the Pool’s investment policies regarding diversification, oversight, and internal controls. We have also retained an attorney and forensic accountant who are investigating the Pool’s investment history to learn whether proper policies and investment practices were followed and whether there is a likelihood of recovery through litigation. This work will probably be completed in early January.

On November 4th, I and Trustees Leslie Airola-Murveit and Jamie Schein attended a meeting of the County Board of Supervisors where Mr. Buffington answered a series of questions developed by County Counsel. County Superintendent of Schools Jean Holbrook made a compelling case on behalf of all 23 districts that they should be in a favored position in the event of any recovery. Later that day, Trustee David Bailard attended a meeting of the Finance and Operations Sub-Committee of the Board of Supervisors and expressed his opinions about urgently needed reforms in the Pool’s investment policy.

It is clear that the County Treasurer and the Board of Supervisors see a need for major reform, but it is not clear that we share a common view of the extent or depth of needed reforms. For example, we believe that the Pool should achieve a higher level of diversification than is currently being recommended, and that there should be more powerful—possibly independent—controls in place. We are also seeking further legal clarification about our options with regard to our reserves and other non-operating funds (such as future bond sales).

Congresswoman Anna Eshoo is also mounting an effort to seek local relief through the federal bailout legislation that was recently enacted by Congress, an effort that we will support with a local letter-writing campaign. The idea will be to impress on the directors of the program that not all investors in Lehman were hurt equally: schools, for example, lost operating funds as well as reserve and bond funds—all taxpayer’s dollars. Essentially, shouldn’t lost tax receipts receive a priority place in bailout decision-making when the bailout is being made with taxpayer’s dollars?

All 23 school districts will be participating in this letter-writing campaign, and when I receive the guidelines and materials, I will forward them to you by way of a special message in the “Spot” or “Roar.”

Thank you for your interest in this unfortunate development, and I know that I will be able to count on your support when it’s time to take the next steps.

Eric Hartwig
Superintendent