The Board met last night and gave direction to the administration on building our 2009-2010 budget. Although it is technically not approved until the middle of June, barring any singificant swing in the State’s already awful financial situation, I suspect we are close to having a final budget.
In my opinion, we have a pretty solid budget in what is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. We were able to do this through a very collaborative and deliberate process that involved the board, administrators, employees, and parents. And specifically, our relative good fortune (especially compared to other school districts) is due to a number of factors including:
- The passage of Measure B
- The continual great efforts of the San Carlos Educational Foundation
- Reductions in salaries agreed to by teachers and other employees
- The amazing work done by the Special Ed team to dramatically improve and restructure the program
- Some Federal stimulus money
- The increased enrollment in the District (which translates into more money)
- Contribution from the sites to the District of some of their formerly restricted funds
All of these combined to save a bunch of programs and positions, including:
- Music
- Librarians
- P.E. Associates
- Counselors
- Middle School Assistant Principals
- Literacy Support
- Math support
- Hands-on Science
- Healthy Cities tutoring program
- Majority of teacher development/training
- And many other programs…
Now, of course we did make cuts. In addition to the salary reductions mentioned above, we will likely cut groundskeeping, custodians, supplies, deferred maintenance contributions, as well as payments toward future retiree health benefits. And as we all know, the State situation is fairly unstable, so hopefully we won’t get any worse news from them in the coming year. In any case, we will still face a small deficit this year and a larger one next year, which means barring any positive news from the State, we will likely have to make additional cuts a year from now when looking at the 2010-2011 budget. But one step at a time.
Lastly, note that because a majority of the State cuts happened mid-year, we had to significantly dip into our financial reserves this year to maintain our level of programs. What once was a 14% reserve is now a 4-5% reserve (note that 3% is the State mandated minimum). So, there’s not a whole lot of wiggle room left.
I want to thank everyone who worked so hard to make this happen, especially all of the District staff. But kudos to the whole community, including teachers, parents, and others who participated in Board forums, took our survey, donated to SCEF, and of course voted for (or campaigned for) Measure B. It was the combination of all of these efforts that allowed us to reach an outcome which unfortunately many districts in California can not.
