news story / By Heidi Walters

Cutting School

Aides, counselors, music teachers, bus drivers — everyone’s hit by the state’s fiscal fiasco

(May 28, 2009)  Last week, Eric Grantz, superintendent and principal of Jacoby Creek Charter School District, sent a letter to parents with the latest bad budget news.

“Due to the financial state of the State it has become necessary to reduce our school budget by $182,000 for the 2009-10 school year,” he wrote. “This figure is in addition to the $100,000 mid-year cut already enacted to our school’s budget. I am being advised from the State that since the recent propositions failed, another $86,000 will be subtracted from current year revenues.”

As a result, continued Grantz’ letter, the school board had approved final layoffs, which include all teacher assistants, the technology assistant and the upper-grade art instructor. These are in addition to layoffs, approved prior to May 15 by the board, of the band instructor, the school counselor and the GATE instructor. (Grantz noted that orchestra and choir would not be cut.)

There was a bit of good news: Federal recovery money was hovering out there somewhere, and next year’s enrollment looked positive. And, Grantz wrote, in traditional buck-up language, “… as with every crises there is opportunity and Jacoby Creek School will respond with fiscal responsibility and a narrow focus on our greatest needs. To the extent necessary we will employ a smaller work force, but with greater specificity.”

The scenario laid out in Grantz’ letter encapsulated, broadly, the situation being played out in schools district across Humboldt and the state. Having already slashed their budgets in February, school districts are preparing to slice wider and deeper following voters’ May 19 rejection of Proposition 1B (and its attendant Prop. 1A, the rainy day fund creator), which would have begun a payback to California schools of $9.3 billion owed them under the 1998 measure Prop. 98. (Prop. 98 requires an annual increase in education spending, which hasn’t happened lately). Now, as the budget deficit climbs, the governor is looking to cut about $5 billion more from schools and community colleges. Meanwhile, federal stimulus funds promise billions for education, but the money is intended for reform and recovery and not meant to make up for state cuts.

“We’re all getting the same hit,” said Grantz by phone last week.

Maureen Hester, business director for the McKinleyville Union School District, seemed despairing last week as she anticipated the next round of cuts. When asked how the budget crisis is affecting her district, she said, “You mean, ‘How are we ever going to educate the kids of our state, and actually have them be successful as adults, when we’re taking billions of dollars away from them every year?’”

Hester said that in the 2007-08 school year, her district spent $5,527 per student (the amount the district is paid per student based on average daily attendance). That has been cut to $5,377 per student for 2008-09. But if everything had been progressing as it should be — that is, had the district’s base revenue limit increased with cost of living adjustments from the state — McKinleyville would have been at $5,842 per student for the 2008-09 school year.

1 2 3 NEXT PAGE >SHARE