Local school officials breathed a sigh of relief Wednesday morning when it became clear that voters had approved a state ballot measure that will alleviate the need for further cuts at K-12 schools for the second part of the school year.
“It makes a $2 million dollar difference just this one year,” said Steve Delay, who retained a seat on the San Benito High School trustees board Tuesday night. “We will really be in good shape financially.”
Proposition 30 increases the sales tax statewide by 0.25 percent and increases income taxes on residents making more than $250,000 annually. It will be in effect for four years and is expected to raise between $6.8 billion to $9 billion.
If the measure had not passed, locally school districts would have faced immediate cuts at the end of December.
Hollister School District Superintendent Gary McIntire said school officials estimated it would have been about a $2.3 million cut to his district for the remainder of this school year, with another $6 million spread over the next three years.
“It is an immediate relief on our budget because we assumed that the cuts would happen,” McIntire said Wednesday, noting that with the trigger cuts, the district would likely have been unable to submit a qualified budget for the next fiscal year.
He said earlier on Tuesday evening as he watched the state returns when the polls closed at 8 p.m., he was not sure if the measure would pass.
“Certainly, polling information had it hovering right around 49 percent, 48 percent,” he said, noting the barrage of negative ads that came out just before the election. “Watching the returns throughout the evening when I first turned it on with only 34 percent of the precincts reporting, it was down 48.5 percent.”
As more precincts were counted, the trend reversed, with the measure being approved by voters.
“It was a big chance and I was very glad it passed,” McIntire said. “It is such a relief. Our district – I just didn’t want to contemplate what it was going to do to us (if it didn’t pass.) It would be pretty brutal.”
With the passage of the measure, McIntire said he was hopeful that cuts to schools have ended for the next four years. He said the school board has already created a restoration committee that will advise the HSD board on what the priorities are in terms of what services should be brought back first when the economy does rebound. McIntire acknowledged it is still several years down the road before the district will be able to start restoring services.
Since 2010-11, the district has cut elementary school music programs, middle school sports, increased the number of students in each classroom and reduced staff at the schools and district office, among other cost-saving measures. They had consistently had to make cuts for the last several years.
“It’s been a while so not getting cuts is relatively good,” he said.
