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| State budget freeze ices school budgets By Mark Noack [ mark@hmbreview.com ] Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 11:27 AM PDT Board members for the Cabrillo Unified School District say they are entering a new school year blind, paying for classes and programs without knowing how much money the state will provide. During its Thursday meeting, the school board was scheduled to adopt a revised district budget — a plan amended to reflect the details of a state budget. Seventy-nine days past its deadline, the state Legislature has still not passed a budget. As a result, school officials across the state find themselves in a long line of vital public services withering from a hold on state funding. Cabrillo directors made clear their disapproval. “I think it’s shameful what the state Legislature is doing,” said board member Jolanda Schreurs. “Everyone I talk to on the East Coast thinks California is ludicrous.” Fiscal Services Director Diane Stupi reported to the school board that the district has still been receiving regular appropriations from the state; however, the money for special programs has entirely disappeared. Specifically, six programs have lost state funding, forcing the district to pay all expenses for school buses, textbooks, adult education, along with programs for low-income and exceptional students. For September, Stupi said the district has lost $84,000, but she warned that the losses will increase exponentially if no state budget is approved by next month. For now, Cabrillo Unified will be paying for those programs with money from its reserve fund, Stupi said. “We’re actually sitting in a lucky position,” Stupi said. “Other districts have to borrow money from the county treasurer.” Rick Pratt, assistant executive director of the California School Boards Association, says that all California schools are facing the same uncertainty. “Schools across the state, under the law, have to have an adopted budget this month for the 2008-2009 school year,” Pratt said. “That revised budget is supposed to be based on a state budget that we don’t have. Now schools have opened their doors and they don’t know how much staffing they can afford.” Pratt says that most school districts are tapping their reserve funds, which averts the financial burden until the money is reimbursed, but does cost the districts valuable interest money. Like their colleagues in other state-funded programs, local school officials worry that the Legislature will further sap their funding to move negotiations forward to solve California’s $15 billion deficit. Efforts by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democratic caucus to pass a sales tax increase to balance the budget have been stymied by the Republican minority, which favors a budget that involves cutting state services and borrowing funds. “No matter what budget is enacted, we know it’s going to require cuts for schools,” Pratt said. “What we don’t know is the magnitude of those cuts.” At the Cabrillo school board meeting, Michael Wright, student body president at Half Moon Bay High School, told board members that education quality was taking a hit from the budget uncertainty. “It’s almost tangible how it’s hurting the education,” Wright said. “Class sizes are horrendous: being in a class of 37 for physics, or 35 for calculus, especially for the really difficult classes, is just awful.” Superintendent Rob Gaskill indicated that any further cuts for the district would likely have to come from staffing, which accounts for about 85 percent of the district’s expenses. “We’ve done all the belt-tightening we can do,” Gaskill said. “There aren’t any easy cuts left.” Gaskill said a severe cut could mean that the district would have to reduce class schedules to five periods instead of six. The school district could ask for a parcel tax to increase revenues, but such a proposal couldn’t be brought before voters until November 2009 and such efforts have failed in the immediate past. CUSD President John Moseley — who is up for re-election this year — could not say whether he would support a tax increase down the road. “If the state gives us cuts, we might have to deal with cuts of our own,” Moseley said. “Right now, I’m fuming at the state Legislature.” |