Local school districts bracing to cope with the state’s
impending cut of $3.1 billion in education spending this year will
have to continue scrambling after Gov. Gray Davis presented his
2003-2004 state budget last week.
Local school districts bracing to cope with the state’s impending cut of $3.1 billion in education spending this year will have to continue scrambling after Gov. Gray Davis presented his 2003-2004 state budget last week.
Davis’ announcement ups the ante to $5.2 billion less for California schools in the next 18 months.
“Nearly every program gets cut in this budget, while protecting education and health care for children as much as possible,” Davis said in a statement.
Some school districts have already received projections of what the cuts mean to them. The Aromas-San Juan Unified School District will lose an estimated $425,655 of its $11 million budget this school year.
“We’re wondering how we’re going to do this – like every other district in the state,” District Superintendent Jackie Munoz said.
Approximately 1,400 students are enrolled in the ASJUSD.
Most local administrators and educators feel they are already living lean after mid-year cuts last year and annual budgets that have been shrinking for the past few years.
“We were living off fat. Now we’re cutting into muscle,” said Tim Foley, San Benito County superintendent of schools.
Districts have two types of funding – restricted and unrestricted. Restricted funding has strings attached and includes reading programs and transportation. Unrestricted includes paper, pencils and salaries, Munoz said.
The budget cuts call for a 10.82-percent decrease in restricted funding and a drop of 2.15 to 3.66 percent in unrestricted monies, according to projections. This means a projected total of $425,655 will have to be cut this year, and nothing can be done until Davis’ proposal goes through the state Legislature.
Most of the revenue for California’s 7,984 K-12 schools comes from state funds and local taxes.
Mid-year cuts are frustrating to districts and administrators because contracts have already been signed and can not be dropped in the middle of the school year – money that’s been committed for the year.
Munoz said 72 percent of her district’s budget is tied up in certificated and classified contracts and staff benefits.
“We’ve already started the school year. We’ve already contracted everyone,” she said.
Munoz compared the mid-year budget cuts to a jet that has already taken off and has fuel taken out of it in mid-flight.
Over the district’s holiday break, Munoz froze all spending, hiring and travel conferences. There are exceptions, she said, but there has to be a “dire need.”
Munoz will give a report to the ASJUSD Board of Trustees and the district’s budget committee and begin to discuss specifics about where and what to cut. She also plans on holding forums for staff and the community.
Joe Hudson, principal of San Juan School and member of the district budget committee, said the committee meets Jan. 24 to begin hashing out what can be expended.
In the next few months, concrete decisions will be made as to where budget cuts can be made. One possibility is in class-size reduction. A district or school receives money for each class that had 20 or fewer students. All K-3 classes at ASJUSD are 20 or less.
The district is spending $300,000 of its own money to keep the programs going – funds that may dry up after the $5.2-billion cut.
And while some schools will consider cutting positions such as assistant principals as a means of dealing with the budget cuts, it isn’t an option for ASJUSD since the district is so small and doesn’t have any assistant principals, Munoz said.
While no one in the district will guess where cuts might be made, they say they are fortunate that there is local control of the process.
“Local control is very important. For someone outside of our system – they don’t know our priorities – to try to make the cuts, it would difficult,” Hudson said.
Munoz said she will start planning the 2003-04 fiscal year budget as soon as possible. She said she wants to phase-in the cuts.
The budget for 2003-2004 addresses a $35 billion shortfall within the state.
This is the third year of decline in the state’s General Fund – something that hasn’t happened since World War II.
