Inside the May 14 LCAP Study Session: Priorities, a Five-Year Clock, and a 139-Page Problem

On May 14, Superintendent Jason Sutter and consultant Ron Calloway presented to the full board on the district's instructional direction and LCAP priorities for 2026-27.

Here's what you need to know.

Sutter's First 60 Days: Relationships First

Superintendent Sutter spent his opening weeks visiting classrooms and talking to staff. The message he heard was consistent: staff want strong relationships, positive culture, and consistency across grades. One staff member told him the district had stopped communicating with her, and she wanted the district to see staff as humans, not just workers. Sutter's takeaway: the district needs to rebuild trust with district staff before anything else can succeed.

Sutter raised a direct instructional question: is good teaching dependent on which teacher you get, or can the district make quality instruction consistent across every classroom and grade, so that every student gets the same strong teaching regardless of their teacher? Sutter then answered the question and said, instructional consistency across classrooms is achievable.

He pushed back on the idea that teachers should work harder than students. The classrooms he observed that impressed him had certain things in common: structure, intentionality, and flexible, hands-on instruction, whether that showed up as students explaining math to each other, SEAL strategies applied consistently, or co-teaching models for special education. Trustee Ching asked whether solving the coherence problem also solves the literacy problem. Sutter's answer: no. These are separate challenges, though they overlap.

The Board's Priorities: Three, Not Five

Calloway and Sutter were clear that fewer priorities are better than more. A board cannot do everything at once, and three real priorities are more achievable than five scattered ones.

The three core priorities are literacy growth, ESL growth, and chronic absenteeism. Building trust is not a fourth item on the list. It runs underneath all three, the ongoing work that has to hold for any of the priorities to succeed.

Math came up, but not as a separate priority. The point made was that math and literacy are intertwined. Math scores tend to improve when literacy improves, because literacy is a foundational skill for understanding math, word problems, instructions, reasoning on the page. That is why literacy is named first. Improve literacy, and math improvement tends to follow.

This list matters because it is supposed to guide the LCAP. Whether it actually does is a different question.

The Five-Year Problem

Both Sutter and Calloway said literacy improvement will take five years. When they said this, board member's expression changed noticeably.

Five years is a long time in school district politics, and it raises a real accountability question. If the board is asking for a five-year strategy, the board has to commit to keeping Sutter long enough to see it through. You cannot ask a superintendent to build a five-year literacy plan and then evaluate him on one-year results.

Here is my concern, and I will state it as my opinion. The board members looked genuinely shocked when they heard five years. Literacy has been their central complaint about this district, and I believe they want fast literacy gains in part because those gains would reflect well on them. That instinct is exactly the trap to avoid. If the experts in the room say the needle takes five years to move, then a one-year or two-year performance review of the superintendent on literacy results would not be an honest measure. It would be a politically convenient one. The board should hold itself to the same five-year timeline it is asking Sutter to work within.

ESL Students and Literacy Cannot Be Separated

Calloway was direct on one point, and it deserves its own place in this conversation. Superintendent Sutter noted that English learners make up about a quarter of all students in the district. Calloway's point followed from that: a district cannot make real progress on literacy without bringing its ESL students along with it. He called that a moral imperative.

That is worth holding onto. When literacy is the top priority, and a quarter of the district's students are English learners, literacy progress and ESL progress are not two separate projects. They are the same project.

Chronic Absenteeism: Who's Responsible?

The board spent significant time on absenteeism, which the state data shows is a problem. Trustee Bell kept returning to TK absenteeism specifically. Trustee Landry framed it as a question of whether parents understand the importance of attendance, without naming documented reasons families in this district keep children home, like economic pressures and fears around ICE enforcement. Trustee Ching listed possible causes: cultural attitude, COVID, fear of ICE raids, students not feeling engaged.

Sutter said the district needs to ask families why, not assume. Trustee Lehman pointed out that ADA funding is lost when students don't show up, and said this should be a cultural priority. But here is the real question the board kept circling: does the district have enough staff to address this?

The LCAP Is Too Long, Says the Board's Own Consultant

Calloway made a point about how the LCAP is presented to the public. He pointed to Mark West Union School District, which gives its community a short, plain-language version of its LCAP, roughly 15 pages by Calloway's account, so residents can actually read and evaluate the plan. SVUSD gave its community the full 139-page draft, with blank funding columns. Calloway said an LCAP needs to be understandable to community members, not just specialists, and that successful LCAP development requires input from teachers, the community, the board, and staff. Without all four, he said, it does not work.

Sonoma Schools Alliance has been saying the same thing publicly for months. It is worth noting that the board paid Calloway and his partner for separate governance training, and Calloway is now also recommending they complete CSBA training through SCOE. And it is worth noting that the board's own hired consultant validated the accountability position on the LCAP's length and comprehensibility.

When I asked the district why is the LCAP draft is incomplete, particular sections of the 2nd year of the LCAP, dollar amounts are blank? I have yet to receive a clear answer. But here is the problem: the public cannot be asked to evaluate a document that is not complete. The district could have included the dollar amounts from the first year of the current three-year LCAP cycle, because that spending already happened. It is history, and it is already on the books. Without those figures for ESL, ESN, foster youth, and newcomers, community members cannot meaningfully comment on the plan.

And the timeline makes this worse. The public comment period on the LCAP closes June 3. The board votes to adopt the 2026-27 LCAP on June 18. By the district's own account, the dollar amounts will not be added until the final materials in June. So the community is asked to submit its comment, by June 3, on a 139-page draft with blank funding columns, and the actual numbers do not appear until after the comment window has already closed. The public never gets to comment on a complete plan. That is not a tight schedule. That is a comment process built around an incomplete document.

What Comes Next

Sutter promised to return in August with immediate and long-term steps and a way to measure them. The board asked for details and clear goals. Trustee Ching said the goals should be narrow and specific.

The priorities are set. Whether they stick, whether they get funded, and whether Sutter has the resources and board support to deliver on them over five years, is what matters now.

What You Can Do

This is the moment your voice counts, and the window is short.

Submit written public comment on the 2026-27 LCAP before the deadline on June 3. Tell the board, in writing, that the public cannot evaluate a 139-page draft with blank funding columns, and that you expect a complete document with real dollar amounts.

Attend the board meeting on June 18, when the LCAP is up for adoption, and speak during public comment if you can.

Ask the board, directly, to release a complete LCAP with actual funding figures before the vote, not after it. A plan the community cannot read is a plan the community cannot hold accountable.

The LCAP vote is June 18. The time to be heard is now.

Documented by Leigh Cavalier, Sonoma Schools Alliance, May 2026

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