Latest from JC (Jim Cartmill):" Overabundant Transparency"

Board will examine travel requests

Trips by trustees raise budget issues

By Chris Moran, Union-Tribune Staff Writer

2:00 a.m. June 25, 2009

CHULA VISTA — A plan that appears to approve trips for South County high school trustees and the superintendent to Washington, D.C., Chicago and even England has been put on hold after questions about costs with money so short.

Sweetwater Union High School District board President Jim Cartmill said the plan does not call for blanket payment of hotel or airfares. The board still must vote to approve each request by a trustee or superintendent to travel to professional conferences at taxpayers' expense.

“This was done out of an overabundance of transparency,” Cartmill said, and the plan that appeared on the June 15 agenda did not call for any spending.

However, the report on the tentative travel plan states: “This board item will approve anticipated board travel for July 1, 2009, through June 30, 2010.”

The plan lists 23 conferences. Many of those meetings are scheduled to be held in California, but in some instances the venues are in other states, and in one case, Oxford, England.

“This is very troubling, especially in light of the current economic conditions,” said Miguel Amaral, a counselor at Mar Vista High School in Imperial Beach and president-elect of the counselors union. “If there isn't enough money for counselors to attend conferences, then I don't think the rest of you should go, either.”

Trustee Bertha Lopez agreed and said board members should be role models of thrift. She questioned why the trustees even needed to be members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE) and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

“Let's take them off, guys,” Lopez told fellow board members. “This is ridiculous.”

Trustee Pearl Quiñones defended her attendance at these conferences as experiences that made her a better board member. For example, she said, inspired by what she heard at a HOPE conference, she started a teen pregnancy task force in South County.

Information she received at the Association of of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials meetings, she said, has made her an informed advocate for establishing career pathways in South County high schools that make classes more relevant for students. In addition, she said, her expenses are often covered by the sponsoring organizations.

“Perhaps, Ms. Lopez, you should go so you can find out,” Quiñones said.

Board clerk Sandi Smith said that the list represents conferences that board members and the superintendent have attended in the past and wasn't intended as a travel itinerary for the coming year. The board instructed school officials to remove conferences from the list that trustees have no intention of attending.

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jun/25/1sz25travel181821-board-will-examine-travel-reques/