El Concilio back as after-school provider at Stockton Unified amid push to bolster staffing

Stockton Unified School District will continue to contract with outside organizations to provide staffing support for after-school programs.

Three organizations, including San Francisco-based Brains and Motion Education, San Diego-based Elevo, and Stockton-based El Concilio were awarded service contracts at the Tuesday, Aug. 27 meeting of Stockton Unified Board of Trustees.

Brains and Motion Education was awarded $900,432 and will provide staffing at eight school sites, while Elevo was given $2,816,100 to provide staffing at 21 school sites, and El Concilio received $1,942,231 to provide staffing at 12 school sites.

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The organizations will be tasked with providing staffing support for the district's 42 after-school programs, which are struggling to keep up with high demand, administrators said.

The programs serve roughly 5,000 students, with the capacity limited to 120 students per site, typically underperforming students. Through the programs, students can participate in academic interventions and enrichment activities, and receive help with homework.

Mary Rogers, Stockton Unified's administrator of expanded learning programs, said there is an "immediate need" for outsourcing organizations because there are currently 76 vacancies — of the 84 positions the district has budgeted for, only eight have been filled.

Daytime support paraprofessionals are used to staff after-school programs, as well as supervise students during lunch and recess periods.

"Our goal would be to have internal SUSD employees take on this amazing work and build connections and relationships with our amazing scholars ... unfortunately we don't have that ability right now, so working with these partners is the second best," said Susana Ramirez, Stockton Unified's assistant superintendent of student services.

The next best thing

Stockton Unified has, for the past 10 to 15 years, had the support of outside organizations such as Jacoby Center, The Table Community Foundation, and YMCA to help bolster its after-school programs.

However, Rogers said turnover in staff remains high and some prospective paraprofessionals have not been able to take the California Paraprofessional Exam, delaying their start dates.

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"Every year toward the beginning and also throughout, it's been tough and it's just because you've got kids, young people going through school and their schedules change," Rogers said. "Even with the staff that they bring on, it's a revolving door. Staff are in and out, and we're looking for and need continuity and consistency in our programs, so the staffing that we have will allow more students in. We need as many kids in the program that would like to be in."

At Tuesday's board meeting, Silvia Cantú, a teacher at George Washington Elementary School, raised numerous concerns with the agenda item, including an employee of one of the vendors running a charter school.

"Why are we allowing this company to come in and recruit our own students here? You don't know that they're not going to recruit them for a charter school. I thought our job is to protect our students and our enrollment," Cantú said. "All I saw was this, but no proposals. I just don't understand that. We're going back to 21-22."

Stockton Unified was criticized by the 2021-2022 San Joaquin County Grand Jury for financial mismanagement, dysfunction, and lack of transparency.

Area 2 Trustee AngelAnn Flores also raised concerns about student safety.

Last year, Flores said El Concilio was partnering with outside vendors to bring people onto school site campuses, and some staffers were not comfortable with that.

"There's communications with our partners, with our CEOs, and also with the directors that oversee their programs and partner with us," Rogers said after Flores asked how the district is mitigating those concerns. "We have quarterly reports that say all staff and partners that they work with are fingerprinted."

Flores made a motion to award the contracts to Brains and Motion Education and Elevo, but exclude El Concilio. Stevens told her that wasn't allowed as the contracts were listed under one agenda item so the board would have to exclude them all.

Area 1 Trustee Cecilia Mendez made a new motion to award the contracts as is. Area 3 Trustee Alicia Rico seconded Mendez's motion, which was approved on a 6-1 vote. Flores was the lone dissenter.

"Due to the names on the list and my concern about (the) safety of our students and the people that they've already been put around, I'm going to vote no," Flores said.

Rogers said there are more than 1,200 students on the waitlist to join one of the after-school programs. When asked by Board President Kennetha Stevens if the additional staffing would be able to bring the waitlist down to zero, Rogers said that is the goal, but she couldn't make a promise.

Nonprofit scrutinized for previous after-school deal

The new after-school deal comes after El Concilio, a local nonprofit offering services to primarily the Hispanic population of the Central Valley, was also named in the 2021-2022 grand jury report on the school district.

The report scrutinized a previous after-school deal struck with El Concilio in May 2022 under Mendez’s tenure as board president, and the district's process for procuring outside services.

Last June, Willie Gutierrez, Stockton Unified's director of fiscal services, told the board of trustees that El Concilio’s 2022 contract would not have been awarded if the district’s procurement process had been followed.

This time around, school officials stated that they followed the procurement process by sending out a request for proposal.

"I am proud to say that we did follow the procurement process, working closely with (the) business services department and their staff to make sure that we are in alignment and in compliance," Rogers told the board.

Out of the 15 approved vendors, Creating Creators, El Concilio, and Nexplore were ranked the highest with scores of 91.6, 88.3, and 88. That means three other vendors ranked higher than Brains and Motion, who received a score of 86.3, though the company was still awarded a contract.

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Rogers told the board the three organizations who received contracts were selected because they could fulfill the general needs of staffing, while other approved vendors like Creating Creators would be brought in to offer specific programming, such as coding, robotics, and video production. She said the district will gauge site interest and student needs to bring in additional vendors in the fall.

"We are charged from the state to grow, to expand, to bring in more staff ... we can't unfortunately do it at our district level, so we have to outsource, which is recommended when you talk about working with community-based partners," Rogers said. "There are just things that our district and our staffing cannot meet as far as overall programming for our students."

Record reporter Hannah Workman covers news in Stockton and San Joaquin County. She can be reached at hworkman@recordnet.com or on Twitter @byhannahworkman. Support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow .

This article originally appeared on The Record: El Concilio back as after-school provider at Stockton Unified amid push to bolster staffing