State budget cuts prompt hiring freeze, but new freshmen campus
still a go
”
Boy, there will be pain.
”
– County School District Superintendent Tim Foley
Governor Davis’ latest proposal to reduce K-12 education
spending by $5.2 billion
– an 11 percent cut across-the-board – has left the state’s
school districts reeling, including San Benito’s.
The looming cuts have prompted San Benito and San Andreas high
schools to freeze all new positions despite vacancies, eliminate
substitute teachers and reduce their entire operational budgets by
10 percent.
Governor Davis’ latest proposal to reduce K-12 education spending by $5.2 billion – an 11 percent cut across-the-board – has left the state’s school districts reeling, including San Benito’s.
The looming cuts have prompted San Benito and San Andreas high schools to freeze all new positions despite vacancies, eliminate substitute teachers and reduce their entire operational budgets by 10 percent.
The state’s $21-to-$36 billion deficit threatens local schools with the worst cuts in memory.
“If the cuts are as Draconian as we anticipate, we’ll have fewer services, fewer activities,” said San Benito High School superintendent Dick Lowry.
And, yes, fewer teachers and bigger classrooms, he added.
Sacramento’s drastic cuts mean a $400,000-to-$700,000 shortfall in San Benito High School’s remaining school year budget alone. While the school’s budget is $22 million a year, the sudden threat of a deficit has caused administrations to scramble in the grim prospect of a domino effect on all aspects of education throughout the county’s school districts.
“Were looking now to at least craft the direction of where the dominos fall, so they just don’t implode,” said San Benito County School Superintendent Tim Foley. “The money’s been spent. It’s committed. We’ll be penetrating the reserves.”
“We already made commitments,” concurred Lowry. “You prepare for the whole year. The district makes commitments to the staff and services contracts with other agencies. Say we have $10,000 and it’s to buy supplies. Do you cut that after making the contract?”
The hiring freeze is expected to cut out two part-time teaching positions, he said. Two fulltime teachers going on maternity leave will not be replaced while they’re gone.
The California Teachers Association says the budget cuts will cost high schools $400 a student. That translates to about $800 taken out of a one-hour high school classroom of 20 students. While Foley said no definite decisions have been made either on the state or local level, the choices will be hard and inevitable.
Busing, counseling, vocational programs and the Future Farmers of America program are expected to take hits. Basic improvements, such as reduced class size for 9th grade English and state-of-the-art computers, are also predicted to be things of the past.
Instructional aides can expect their hours to be further reduced, as they were last year, which means their family medical coverage will be lost.
None of this can bode well for San Benito High School’s test levels, which for the past several years have been floating at the state average. By Sacramento’s own mandates and what Lowry calls “screwy” standards, if a school’s test levels don’t go up three years in a row, the state can order the school to come up with an elaborate improvement plan.
The testing is calculated into a statewide Academic Performance Index, one of Governor Davis’ “priority points” instituted after he took office in 1998.
At worst, the state can come in and take over the school by firing administrative staff and replacing them with its own, which then tells the school when and where it can spend its money.
Foley and Lowry say the scenario is far-fetched for one reason.
“That was the threat,” said Foley. “Except you have everyone all over the state in the same situation.”
“I don’t think the state’s going to be able to go into every school in California and take over,” said Lowry.
In the middle of this mayhem San Benito High School is pushing ahead with its new $9-million freshman campus – despite a drastic slow in growth, a state-mandated housing moratorium in Hollister expected to last for at least another year, possibly two, and a new city growth cap. The money has already been earmarked for the project and the reserved funds cannot be dipped into, said Lowry.
Foley says the new campus could be successfully used now, and not just because of the “mega-growth,” as he put it, that people used to anticipate in the community.
“The perfect size of a high school is supposed to be 800 students,” said Foley. “We’re at 2,600. Anyway, the new campus is for transitioning younger kids into the high school.”
But officials can only hope that by the time the campus opens in 2004, the state budget crisis will be solved – an unlikely expectation – because they will need to add three new teachers to the staff.
While they fear the local educational landscape will degrade along with budget cuts to all services in the state, the administrators say the high school is “not in peril” of committing bankruptcy.
Foley is determined to keep his district’s standards up and rally community support. He even sees a possible benefit to the state slashing.
“With this budget crisis, this could be a graceful way out of the high school exit exam,” he said.
Still, administrators, teachers, staff, parents and students should brace for the worst when the state education budget is finalized in June.
“It’s a question of which foot do you want to amputate,” said Foley. “For everything that’s sustained there’s going to be something gone. Boy, there will be pain.”
