The Santa Rosa City Schools district explained

The board prepares to begin the open session ahead of the March 8 meeting (Photo: Josephine Rivera-Hoagland, The Puma Prensa)

By Evan Jackson, staff writer

The Santa Rosa City Schools (SRCS) district has huge influence over life at schools across the city, but its inner workings are often hardly understood by students. In light of recent protests and a demand for board transparency, the Prensa is releasing a summary of how our district works, and where exactly you fit in.

SRCS is made up of 24 schools across Santa Rosa with almost 16,000 students, including elementary, middle, and high schools, along with some charter schools. Charter schools are in the district but are not bound by all the same rules and have a greater degree of independence, such as separate budgets. “A charter school is like a mini district inside a district,” says Margie BradyLong, Maria Carrillo High School math department chair and treasurer and communications chair for the Santa Rosa Rosa Teachers Association.

The district leadership is made up of two levels, the board of education and the superintendent’s cabinet. The board, which is elected by the voters of Santa Rosa, is the highest authority within the district and has the power to decide on direction and policy, which it lays out through the Board Policies, the rules set by the board that govern things like accountability and committee work. Recently, the board has established the Safety Advisory Round Table to address community concerns about student safety and security. It is also responsible for appointing the cabinet, which is made up of various administrators.

The superintendent’s cabinet is responsible for day to day administration of the district. Its main departments are Human Resources, Education Services, Business Services, Student & Family Services, and Technology & Information Services, generally led by assistant superintendents.

“On the whole there is a hierarchy. The board deals with the cabinet and the cabinet is the one that deals with the schools,” says BradyLong.

Map of Trustee areas

The school board is made up of seven directors who are each elected by the residents of the seven trustee areas, each area being associated with one of the board positions and the residents of that area voting for only one trustee. Board members serve four year terms and must be residents of their trustee area. The elections are open to all registered voters living in the trustee area.

The current trustees are: Clerk Ever Flores from Trustee Area 1 (parts of downtown Santa Rosa); director Roxanne McNally from Trustee Area 2 (the northwest section of the city). Director Alegría De La Cruz from Trustee Area 3 (Fountaingrove and Alta Vista); Vice President Omar Medina from Trustee Area 4, which is bordered by Highway 101 in the west and Highway 12 in the north; director Ed Sheffield from Trustee Area 5 (Bennett Valley and Oakmont); President Stephanie Manieri from Trustee Area 6 (Roseland); Trustee Area 7 includes Maria Carrillo High School, Middle Rincon, Skyhawk, and Larkfield-Wikiup, and, as of publication, is currently vacant since the previous director, Laurie Fong, resigned in order to serve as interim principal at Montgomery High School. It is unclear about when a replacement trustee will be chosen by the remaining board members.

The board meets on the second and fourth Wednesdays of most months with an open session at 6:00 p.m. in the city council chambers. All board meetings are open to the public, including students, with the exception of the closed session portion in which student expulsions and legal counsel are covered.

“The board's responsibility is to set [district] policy and to hire the superintendent,” says BradyLong. The superintendent of the district Anna Turnell is responsible for reporting to the board and serves as an intermediary between the district administrators and the board. The assistant and associate superintendents report to them.

Money from state, local, and federal sources goes to the district, which then allocates some discretionary spending of that money to each school—albeit not much. Most funding is tied to specific uses. The district is responsible for paying for teacher salaries, benefits, supplies, and operating expenditures. 

District funding comes from several sources. The district gets 87% ($192,050,238) of its funding from the state. And the bulk of this funding is allocated through the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), a system set up by the state that gives money based on the district’s Average Daily Attendance (ADA), a measure of how often students are attending class, along with certain categories of students such as those marked as English Language Learners and Free and Reduced Lunch students. The state gives each district $9,303 per student as of 2022-23, based on ADA. The LCFF system was enacted in 2013–14 to give the districts more discretion over how they use state money, in contrast to the previous system where the state restricted even more of what the  money could be used for. Total SRCS district revenue for 2022-23 is $217,124,714 with the total expenditures being $228,849,752, the deficit being due to over budgeting.The district budgets for what they might spend and usually spend less in reality.

Some of the district's money is allocated to individual schools for use at their discretion. Most of it gets used to fulfill a site’s School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA), which is a plan formed by the individual schools for spending on school programs and initiatives that are then approved by the board. SPSA funds are used for programs like After School Math Tutoring. The school district allocated $87,098.30 to Maria Carrillo for our SPSA. The amount allocated to each school varies, with Carrillo being below the average of around $180,000. Very little of the district's overall budget is allocated to the schools for discretionary spending.

Additional information about the SRCS district can be found on their webpage or in their board meetings. Board meeting records can be found on the website in board agenda under quick links. The records there go back three years, and specific information can be found using the search function.