District opts for smaller reserve

San Juan-Aromas Unified School District trustees voted 3-2 in favor of amending board policy to require the district to keep a 9 percent reserve, which easily meets the state-mandated minimum but is nearly half the size of the original rainy-day fund.
Board policy previously stipulated the district keep 17 percent of the budget in reserves, enough to pay at least two months of general fund operating expenditures. At the regularly scheduled board meeting last week, trustees changed the reserve to 9 percent, an amount that is three times the size of the state-mandated 3 percent.
The change will put slightly more than $1 million back into the general fund for spending. Trustees Jeff Hancock and Angelica Medina cast the dissenting votes, said Superintendent Ruben Zepeda.
“Moving it from a 17 percent to a 9 percent reserve saves us about a million dollars that I would normally just pull out and put in a reserve account,” Zepeda told the Free Lance. “So now, I’m not forced to just pull out a million dollars from next year’s budget.”
Hancock was much more in favor of keeping a reserve “closer to 17 percent or the 17 percent” and believes the proposed 9 percent is “too low,” Zepeda said. Medina did not want to reduce the reserve unless the money went toward getting rid of combination classrooms where students of multiple grades share a teacher, Zepeda said.
Under the original board policy, an additional reserve of $100,000 was kept for special education and could be increased yearly up to a maximum of $300,000.
Under the amended board policy, the special education fund can grow up to a maximum of $200,000, placing another $100,000 back in the general fund for spending.