Hollister
– The Hollister School District Board of Trustees has approved a
2006-2007 budget that has the district operating in the black only
a year after HSD submitted a budget to the state that wasn’t nearly
as sunny.
Hollister – The Hollister School District Board of Trustees has approved a 2006-2007 budget that has the district operating in the black only a year after HSD submitted a budget to the state that wasn’t nearly as sunny.
“We’re very pleased that we’ve been able to get the district back into decent financial shape,” Superintendent Ron Crates said.
The decision was not unanimous, however, as Board President Eugenia Sanchez and Trustee Dee Brown voted against the budget. Both said they felt the board had not been presented with enough information to make a responsible decision about the budget one way or the other.
“I appreciate the fact that Mr. Bachofer (district Chief Business Officer) came to us with a balanced budget,” Brown said. “My vote was sort of an ongoing protest of the fact that we haven’t been able to see everything at once. … We’ve never had the chance to sit down and prioritize what we want for this budget.”
Last year the District received a “qualified letter” from the County Office of Education, which means that had HSD failed to make financial changes or cuts, the district would not be able to pay its bills and would be running at a $2.9 million deficit by 2008.
According to the budget approved by HSD Trustees last week, however, the district will be able to maintain the 3 percent reserve funds mandated by law for situations of economic uncertainty, and will have at least $78,000 in additional reserves until at least 2009.
“It’s a fairly conservative budget, but we feel good about what we’ve done,” Crates said. “That doesn’t mean that we have all these moneys to throw around however we please, though.”
As early as February, HSD began looking for places to trim the budget by correcting errors made in the previous document – such as $2 million in funds overstated for transportation and maintenance costs – and cutting around $500,000 in operating and special education costs.
Despite all this, the district is also embarking upon several new programs, including a complete revamp of HSD’s English Learner program, a program called ExCel that would restructure the way certain subjects are taught at local schools, the possibility of new magnet schools and shrinking kindergarten class sizes and instituting full-day kindergarten for the next school year.
“We can do these because we’ve planned for them,” Crates said. “We started this budget with that in mind and worked with School Services of California to make sure we had a good one.”
Still, some Trustees are uneasy about the district’s clean bill of financial health.
“We were in a lot of trouble not very long ago,” Brown said. “And now all of those problems have just disappeared and we can spend all this money on new projects? I just don’t understand how that’s possible.”
Others, however, have faith in the district’s numbers and where HSD is headed financially.
“I think it’s probably healthy that we had a three to two vote,” said Trustee Randal Phelps, who voted to approve the budget. “But I feel comfortable with these numbers and the decision we made, and I’m very excited about the coming year.”
Danielle Smith covers education for the Free Lance. Reach her at 637-5566, ext. 336 or ds****@fr***********.com
