County superintendent addresses tough issues
By Joann Groff joann@theacorn.om

Courtesy of VCOE Chuck Weis

Chuck Weis, Ventura County's superintendent of schools, talked budget, testing, drug use and declining enrollment with a group of administrators, teachers and local business members last week.

The Thousand Oaks-Westlake Village Regional Chamber of Commerce's education committee invited Weis to speak on the state of education in the county.

"We are experiencing a phenomenon we haven't experienced ever in my career in Ventura County- declining enrollment," Weis said. "We've consistently experienced about a 1 percent growth each year. It wasn't enough to build new schools, but it was enough to create some overcrowding before meeting the threshold. Now we are slowly declining. And the slow decline is deadly to our district."

Although kindergarten is being hit the hardest, Weis said, the district is losing kids in all elementary grade levels. When lower numbers are sprinkled throughout the grades, cutting teachers isn't an option, he explained.

"I know the Conejo district is dealing with the very difficult process of closing schools," Weis said. "No one likes it, and if we had our druthers, we wouldn't do it. It's tough."

The superintendent encouraged the district to keep the sites that are closed, if at all possible.

Weis broke down the budget for the various districts, stating that almost 50 percent of budgets go to teacher and other certified personnel salaries. About 22 percent go to employee benefits and 14 percent to classified employees.

"It's a very laborintensive operation," Weis said. "That means we have about 15 percent of the budget to shrink without shrinking people."

And as districts send their budgets to Weis for approval, shrinking is inevitable. In 30 of the 32 years he's been dealing with budgets, they've had to be cut, he said.

A sobering moment came when Weis addressed drug use.

"Ventura County kids do better than average, but they do so much better it scares me in one subject- alcohol and drug use," Weis said. "They are using and abusing at a higher rate than California in general. Binge drinking used to be a high school problem. Now it's happening in elementary school. Even if they aren't killing themselves, they are killing brain cells.

"This is a crisis. It's the biggest problem in Ventura County, and nothing we've done has worked."

Test scores also came up as Weis reiterated that because the Conejo Valley district includes so many high-performing schools it's normal for scores to level out.

"When you get close to the ceiling there's a greater likelihood for scores to go closer to the mean before topping out," he said.

Weis also addressed the California High School Exit Exam, which 80 percent of students are passing in 10th grade and 98 percent are passing by 12th.

"The hidden number here is those who don't stay," Weis said. "The graduation rate is dropping, and the dropout rate is increasing. We think part of that reason is that they become discouraged if they don't pass the exit exam."

Weis, the county's elected superintendent for 15 years, is serving his fourth consecutive four-year term. His office runs schools for students with disabilities and for severely handicapped, incarcerated and expelled youth. The county office also conducts the regional occupation program, which teaches students trades as varied as welding and bank telling.

"Our class sizes are way too large, and we hamstring our teachers by not giving them what they need," he said. "Our kids are doing surprisingly well considering how poorly we support our schools."