Thumbnail photo: Don McArthur (middle) is retiring from his Trustee Area 1 seat on the Del Norte Unified School District Board of Trustees. | Photo courtesy of dnusd.org.
Trustee Area 5 representative Michael Greer was absent. Among the items discussed at Thursday’s Del Norte County Unified School District meeting:
Trustee Area 1 Vacancy: With Del Norte Unified School District’s longest-serving trustee, Don McArthur, announcing his retirement earlier this year, the Board of Trustees will soon have a vacancy.
DNUSD and the Del Norte County Office of Education will be seeking candidates interested in serving in the Trustee Area 1 seat. The Board expects to extend an appointment in July or August. For more information, email communications@dnusd.org.
Summer meals update: Del Norte Unified ensured that 1,295 students received breakfast and lunch this week, Nutrition Services Director Julie Carter Bjorkstrand told trustees.
The district’s Seamless Summer Food Program is wrapping up its second week with staff serving a total of 8,076 meals as of Thursday. During its first week, DNUSD served 7,512 meals to 1,173 children, Bjorkstrand said. The district is expected to serve more than 73,000 meals this summer, which is more than last year, she said.
Meanwhile, Bjorkstrand said her department has taken advantage of a home delivery option the USDA’s Summer Food Service Program allows for rural areas. Bjorkstrand said she’s piloting this option by delivering meals to children in Klamath.
As of Thursday, Bjorkstrand said her staff delivered meals to 61 Klamath children on Wednesday out of 97 that have registered to receive food. Last year, when picking up food was the only option in Klamath, the district distributed food to an average of 18 children per service day, Bjorkstrand said.
“In the first two weeks we’re averaging 49 children per day getting food,” she said. “That, right away, tells me this is a beneficial approach for families in Klamath.”
The Nutrition Services Department is still working out the kinks, however. One challenge is delivering meals when no one is home. Bjorkstrand said that since the food isn’t shelf stable, someone has to be available to collect the meals.
“We’ve come up with a potential solution, which is having a cooler and an ice pack outside the house,” she said. “We can place refrigerated items in the cooler and the family can retrieve them. Hopefully we can deliver to more than 61 kids next week.”
For more information about the Seamless Summer Food Program, click here.
New math curriculum: Trustees took the first step in implementing a new math curriculum when they approved a letter of intent to adopt the Amplify platform for transitional kindergarten through fifth grade.
According to Leslee Machado, DNUSD’s director of curriculum, instruction and assessment, the letter of intent states that the Board would adopt the platform at its next meeting July 30. This will allow the materials to be shipped to the district so students can have access to them when school starts on Aug. 24, she said.
The total cost to the district will be $564,000 for the eight-year adoption of the curriculum, though Amplify doesn’t send all eight years of materials to DNUSD at once, Machado said.
Machado and a team of teachers representing all schools and grade spans also recommended DNUSD implement the Big Ideas Math curriculum for grades six through 12. Del Norte High School math teacher Karston Pound said the curriculum has “a ton of support” for students. Pound said he also appreciated Big Idea’s consistency between sixth and 12th grade.
Machado said she would also ask the DNUSD Board to adopt the Big Ideas curriculum on July 30. The materials from both platforms, including Amplify, will be available for public viewing at the DNUSD office, 301 W. Washington Boulevard, through July 29.
DNUSD Board adopts 2026-27 budget
DNUSD’s responsibility for retirement benefits has increased to about $933,000 in the roughly three weeks since the Board held a public hearing focusing on its 2026-27 budget.
This means that the district’s budget shortfall also increased by about $200,000 since June 4 public hearing bringing it to roughly $3.998 million, Assistant Superintendent of Business Greg Bowen said.
Four members of the Board adopted a 2026-27 budget that includes an ending fund balance of about $27 million, according to Bowen. Roughly $15.6 million of that is in restricted funding — Bowen said the district is continuing to find ways to put those dollars at work.
Bowen also pointed to a $2.6 million reserve that is from federal Secure Rural School funding revenue. That is expected to increase when DNUSD gets its SRS allotment for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 fiscal years, but Bowen said the district has yet to see those dollars.
The June 4 public hearing was held after California Gov. Gavin Newsom released his revised budget proposal in May. At that hearing, Bowen said DNUSD expected to receive $46 million in state Local Control Funding Formula dollars, $15 million in state grants, $4.2 million in federal funding and $9.5 million in local revenue.
In his budget, Newsom proposed a 4.31% cost of living adjustment, or “super COLA.” He also pledged more funding for special education with DNUSD’s potential allocation being $967,000 in additional SPED dollars, according to Bowen.
However, declining enrollment by about 50 to 60 students each year means that DNUSD is losing about $750,000 in average daily attendance funding, Bowen said on June 4. On Thursday, he and Superintendent Jeff Harris reiterated that California’s upcoming change in leadership and increasing utility and insurance costs are also a concern.
The school district is required to maintain a 3% reserve for economic uncertainty. Harris said that accounts for about three days of payroll.
