Davis Joint Unified School District reviews worker pay, student performance and enrollment
By YUENJO FAN — city@theaggie.org
The Davis Joint Unified School District (DJUSD) hosted its first board meeting of the year on Thursday, Jan. 16.
The meeting, spanning four hours, discussed tentative agreements between DJUSD and the California School Employees Association (CSEA), the 2024 to 2025 Local Control Accountability Plan and the district’s enrollment numbers.
Laura Juanitas, the DJUSD associate superintendent of student support services, addressed the board about the district’s new agreements with the CSEA. Employees under the CSEA are staff members without teaching credentials, such as office staff, assistants, custodians, cafeteria workers and bus drivers.
“I am pleased to announce that we have reached tentative agreement on article VII and article XIV with the California School Employees Association chapter 572 for the 2024 to 2025 school year,” Juanitas said. “We have also negotiated 11 memorandums of understanding for this year. CSEA membership ratified the agreement last week, and to finalize the agreement in [memorandums of understanding], we must have board approval.”
Shortly after, the board approved both the tentative agreements and the memorandums of understanding between DJUSD and the CSEA. A tentative agreement represents the first step in negotiations. Memorandums of understanding are agreements that display a shared consensus without any legal bindings.
The ratified documents, Article VII and Article XIV, cover grievance procedures and employee salary and benefits, respectively. Article VII ensures that employees who are represented by CSEA have a formal system of reporting grievances: Employees can file them to an immediate supervisor, report to the Office of Associate Superintendent or request a mediation, depending on the issue’s severity.
On the other hand, Article XIV details in the instance where the district engages in further wage increases or additional health benefits, CSEA members will also be incorporated into the compensation. Moreover, the 11 accepted memorandums of understanding included but were not limited to: security camera installments, retirement incentives and a new custodial job classification.
Amongst the major discussion items, the district also touched on the mid-year update of the Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP), which addresses a variety of issues relating to student academic success, inclusion, opportunity and confidence.
DJUSD Associate Superintendent of Instructional Services Troy Allen provided further details.
“Our first step in the LCAP process is to engage in data analysis with genuine curiosity and then drive toward [an] understanding of root causes and continuous improvement,” Allen said. “This is followed by outreach, which gives us the ability to more fully understand the data, work with our community to build shared understanding of how we use our limited resources and collect ideas that inform our current and upcoming plans.”
Allen further explained how data collected by the LCAP is retrieved from the California School Dashboard website, which contains changes in statistics, such as performance levels, over time. As a result, the district is able to measure the academic productivity of DJUSD students each year. With the current LCAP approved from 2024 until 2027, the school board will be closely monitoring continuing updates regarding student success.
The final major area of discussion revolved around the topic of DJUSD’s declining new student enrollment. Maria Clayton, the school district’s chief strategy officer, provided evidence of a significant projected decline in student enrollment over the next decade. To combat this, the district has proposed new housing developments that will increase the number of residents, resulting in a higher student population.
“The proposed Village Farms project would be constructed within the North Davis boundary area and has been estimated to be 1,800 units,” Clayton said. “[It] would be built over a 15-year period, and our projections suggest that they would yield over 700 students by 2041. The proposed project of the Shriner’s Property is on the same side of town but on the Korematsu-Harper boundary area. This project has an estimated 1,200 units and, if approved by voters in June of 2026, would be built over a six-year period.”
The Village Farms project is expected to yield over 700 new students to DJUSD, and the Shriner’s development is expected to yield 273 students. These housing developments will be in the hands of local voters, with the Village Farms development expected to be on ballots in November 2025 and the Shriner’s development on ballots in June 2026. More information on the DJUSD board meeting can be found in the DJUSD’s “Boundary/Enrollment Study Session 5” report online.
Written By Yuenjo Fan — city@theaggie.org
