At the Governor’s State of the State address, he vowed to “protect education” despite the addititional $20 billion shortfall that the State is facing through next fiscal year. I guess I’m not sure what dictionary he uses, but the word “protect” may have a different definition in his than it does in mine.
In the Governor’s proposed budget that came out this month, there is indeed another cut to K-12 education. It includes what is termed an “administrative cut” of $191/child and a negative COLA (cost of living adjustment) of -0.38%. For the SCSD, this means another funding reduction of almost $700,000.
These cuts are incredible, and above the $900K in reductions we were going to need to make for next year anyway (which is above the $700,000 in cuts we already made mid-year this year by eliminating administrative positions). And of course, most people who follow school finance think this is the good case scenario! A more conservative projection suggests we may need to cut up to $2,000,000 in our budget for next year!
To put that in perspective, that is almost 10% of our entire budget, and comes on top of the 18% reduction in revenue we’ve already incurred over the last three years. We’re in for very rocky times, and it’s just shameful that our state is so short-sighted.
I will give periodic updates on this subject throughout the school year. The School Board is having a special budget workshop Board Meeting on January 26th where we will discuss all of our options, which include program cuts, potential revenue generation ideas, as well as advocacy efforts. In the very short term, how everyone can help is to support the San Carlos Educational Foundation (including attending Spring Fling on March 6th)– every dollar raised by SCEF is as critical as ever!
