Features

Two weeks after the Berkeley Unified School District dropped its budget rating from positive to qualified and the announced start of a teacher work slowdown over a pay raise dispute, fiscal issues dominate this week’s BUSD board meeting. 

The meeting is scheduled for 7:30 p.m., Wednesday night, at the Old City Hall on Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Looking backward, the board will be asked to approve the Audit Report by independent auditors Vavrinek, Trine, Day & Co. for the 2003-04 fiscal year. The audit was due to be filed with county and state educational officials last December, but the district was granted an audit extension until the end of this month. Details of the report were not available at presstime. 

Looking forward, board members will hear a report by Deputy Superintendent Glenston Thompson on the expected effects of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s state budget recommendations on the Berkeley Unified schools. Schwarzenegger has proposed severe cuts in state money available to local districts under Proposition 98, the state constitutional initiative that was supposed to provide a base level of educational money. 

One item that will not be on Wednesday’s agenda is the decision on the expulsion of the Berkeley High student caught on campus earlier this month with a gun in her backpack. The student, who has not been named, has not been on campus since a legally-mandated recommendation of expulsion by BHS principal Jim Slemp. 

BHS officials have said the girl told them that the gun belonged to her father, who gave it to her for safekeeping from her siblings. 

BUSD Public Information Officer Mark Coplan said that an expulsion panel has held a hearing on the student’s expulsion, and will present its recommendation to the BUSD Board at the board’s March 8 meeting. Coplan said he did not know the panel’s recommendation and, by law, could not reveal it even if he did. 

“All of this is being conducted in secret,” he explained. Coplan said that the expulsion panel will present its findings to the board in closed session, and while no details will be revealed, the board will announce its decision on the recommendation in open session. 

Meanwhile, Berkeley Police Information Officer Joe Okies said that the police will turn over its findings in the BHS student gun case today (Tuesday) or Wednesday to the Alameda County district attorney’s office. 

D.A. officials will then decide whether or not to bring charges against either the student or her father, or both.