Little appears to have changed regarding funds from the State of California (i.e. there still appear to be mid-year cuts for SDUSD and a deficit projected for AY 2012/13) and nothing appears to have been decided by the BoE with regards to how to provide public education with the funds available from the State of California.
Below are Op-Ed pieces published in the Union-Tribune recently. The first is a letter from Superintendent Kowba to the readers. The second two are editorials from the Union-Tribune Editorial Boards. Each describes briefly the financial situation at SDUSD.
New cuts could push San Diego schools to insolvency - W. Kowba
October 13, 2011The state has responded to the current economic crisis with budget cuts that will devastate public education in California. This statement may sound overly dramatic, but it will become a reality if the governor levies an additional $1.5 billion in midyear cuts on K-12 education in January in accordance with the budget act.
School districts throughout California are at the end of the budget rope. More than $15 billion has been cut from California’s public school budgets during the last four years. Most districts have used every budget trick in the bag to get through these difficult times, and options to keep cuts away from the classroom have been exhausted. This year, schools have opened with far fewer teachers and support staff than needed to ensure quality educational programs.
San Diego Unified School District has been forced to cut $450 million from its budget since 2007-08. These cumulative reductions have been sweeping and devastating, and are now being felt in all of our classrooms. In September, our students were greeted by several hundred fewer teachers and more than 500 fewer support staff. There are now more than 2,200 fewer staff serving students in our schools than in 2008, a reduction of about 15 percent.
Last January, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed a budget that balanced cuts with new tax revenues to support public education. That bold proposal was dependent on a bipartisan compromise in the Legislature that would have given voters the opportunity to decide if they wanted to support public education. Compromise was not reached.
With no Republican support, the governor had no choice but to sign a budget that was balanced on precarious revenue expectations. Knowing that the new state budget was based more on hope than reality, the Legislature approved a budget with “trigger cuts” that could drastically cut education funding midyear if revenue projections in December fall below the revenue assumptions built into July’s budget act.
This last-minute budget gimmick included the option to shorten the school year by seven days as a way for districts to accommodate the revenue reductions. As with many last-minute budget solutions, no one analyzed the impacts that midyear cuts would have on our schools. The school year for California’s children has already been reduced by five days as a result of last year’s budget cuts. Eliminating another seven days of instruction is a terrible idea that cannot be implemented by almost 50 percent of California’s school districts, which have closed collective-bargaining contracts.
The countdown to midyear cuts has already begun. For the first two months of this fiscal year, California is already nearly $600 million below its revenue projections. In December, the state must estimate its revenue for the year. Should those projections fall more than $2 billion below the budget target, K-12 education could be immediately cut by as much as $1.5 billion. San Diego Unified would be pressed to reduce its general fund by approximately $30 million on top of more than $80 million previously removed to build this budget.
Even without midyear cuts, San Diego Unified is facing a deficit of approximately $60 million for the 2012-13 school year. After four straight years of budget reductions, balancing next year’s budget with a deficit of that magnitude will be more difficult than ever. It will necessitate more layoffs, class-size increases, and serious negotiations with our employee groups about salary and benefit concessions that could mitigate the number of layoffs. The Board of Education has asked employee groups to begin these difficult conversations. The fiscal health and solvency of the district will require that we enter these negotiations with open minds and a spirit of collaboration to reach workable and fair budget solutions that can preserve the quality of education we provide to San Diego’s children.
Should the state pull the trigger on midyear cuts, the district will have few viable options to solve a $30 million funding reduction in January. San Diego Unified will have to use already depleted reserves and one-time solutions. This quick fix will only escalate the projected deficit for 2012-13 to an unmanageable level of more than $100 million. Under that worst-case scenario, even with employee concessions and hundreds of teacher and support staff layoffs, a balanced budget will be very difficult to achieve, challenging the fiscal solvency of the district.
At this point, the future of our children is in the hands of the Legislature and the governor. Will they find an alternative to pulling the trigger, or will they give Californians an opportunity to vote on education funding, before it’s too late to save our schools?
Kowba is superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District
For San Diego Unified, apocalypse now - Union-Tribune Editorial Board
October 13, 2011
Grim revenue reports appear to make it a forgone conclusion that automatic state spending cuts will be triggered this winter, as critics of the smoke-and-mirrors 2011-12 budget have been predicting since it was adopted in June.
These cuts will be disastrous for many school districts. The primary tool the budget law gives school districts to reduce costs – cutting salaries by shortening the school year seven days – isn’t readily achievable in many districts, where contract changes require the concurrence of employee unions. Many unions believe they have made enough concessions and that cost savings should be found elsewhere. But that is just not a position that squares with the reality of school finances, where employee compensation is by far the biggest spending category.
Which brings us to San Diego Unified, which has such contracts with its unions. In a commentary in today’s U-T (opposite page), Superintendent Bill Kowba says the district would have to make about $30 million in devastating midyear cuts if the budget trigger provision kicks in and overall state school funding is reduced by $1.5 billion. Kowba urges Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature to somehow find the money to avoid the trigger cuts, perhaps by reviving a budget compromise in which voters would be asked to increase taxes to provide more money for education.
We are sympathetic, but it is simply not realistic to expect Sacramento – or voters – to come to the rescue. It also has to be noted that the district has made its problems even worse. By early 2010, the folly of the district’s traditional practice of budgeting for salaries on the assumption that revenue provided by the state would always go up had become apparent. With employee compensation eating up 90 percent of all general spending, it was plain that something basic had to be done about pay and benefits beyond just temporary furloughs.
Instead, however, the board approved phased-in raises of 7.2 percent for all employees in 2012-13 and made no changes in policies that provide many teachers and some other employees automatic 3.8 percent annual raises based on years on the job.
Now strategy no. 1 for district leaders is getting unions to agree to forgo the pending raises. We hope union members are understanding.
But whatever short-term fixes are used to address the current crisis, in the big picture, a San Diego Unified budget model that assumes automatic pay raises for many employees just doesn’t work anymore.
Unless something changes, it won’t be long before the entire budget goes to employee compensation – with little left for athletics, musical instruments, buses, janitorial services, computers, Internet access and other important needs. San Diegans urgently need their school district leaders – teachers, administrators and board members – to accept the financial realities and work together to avoid catastrophe in the classroom.
Grim revenue reports appear to make it a forgone conclusion that automatic state spending cuts will be triggered this winter, as critics of the smoke-and-mirrors 2011-12 budget have been predicting since it was adopted in June.
These cuts will be disastrous for many school districts. The primary tool the budget law gives school districts to reduce costs – cutting salaries by shortening the school year seven days – isn’t readily achievable in many districts, where contract changes require the concurrence of employee unions. Many unions believe they have made enough concessions and that cost savings should be found elsewhere. But that is just not a position that squares with the reality of school finances, where employee compensation is by far the biggest spending category.
Which brings us to San Diego Unified, which has such contracts with its unions. In a commentary in today’s U-T (opposite page), Superintendent Bill Kowba says the district would have to make about $30 million in devastating midyear cuts if the budget trigger provision kicks in and overall state school funding is reduced by $1.5 billion. Kowba urges Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature to somehow find the money to avoid the trigger cuts, perhaps by reviving a budget compromise in which voters would be asked to increase taxes to provide more money for education.
We are sympathetic, but it is simply not realistic to expect Sacramento – or voters – to come to the rescue. It also has to be noted that the district has made its problems even worse. By early 2010, the folly of the district’s traditional practice of budgeting for salaries on the assumption that revenue provided by the state would always go up had become apparent. With employee compensation eating up 90 percent of all general spending, it was plain that something basic had to be done about pay and benefits beyond just temporary furloughs.
Instead, however, the board approved phased-in raises of 7.2 percent for all employees in 2012-13 and made no changes in policies that provide many teachers and some other employees automatic 3.8 percent annual raises based on years on the job.
Now strategy no. 1 for district leaders is getting unions to agree to forgo the pending raises. We hope union members are understanding.
But whatever short-term fixes are used to address the current crisis, in the big picture, a San Diego Unified budget model that assumes automatic pay raises for many employees just doesn’t work anymore.
Unless something changes, it won’t be long before the entire budget goes to employee compensation – with little left for athletics, musical instruments, buses, janitorial services, computers, Internet access and other important needs. San Diegans urgently need their school district leaders – teachers, administrators and board members – to accept the financial realities and work together to avoid catastrophe in the classroom.
Saving San Diego schools - Union Tribune Editorial Board
October 25, 2011“Because of the need for reducing the tax burden, class sizes were increased, teachers’ salaries were lowered and drastic economies applied.” – From the San Diego Unified School District’s official history, regarding financial difficulties faced in the 1930s
The renewed warnings of impending insolvency of city schools pose what is probably the greatest financial challenge for the district since the Great Depression, and possibly since the district’s first school opened in August 1854 in a rented room with a single teacher paid $40 a month. None of today’s financial options are good, none of the possible solutions easy. The current level of quality education for 131,500 children on more than 180 campuses with some 6,600 teachers is threatened.
The school board tonight will hear details of staff’s recommendation to close, consolidate or relocate dozens of schools next year and is expected to discuss the impact of insolvency on California’s second-largest district. Options such as the sale of district real estate and dramatic cutbacks in what’s left of the school bus program will also be outlined and updated. No decision on school closures is expected until December.
San Diego Unified faces a deficit next year in its $1 billion operating budget of between $60 million and $118 million, with the worst-case scenario looming if additional cutbacks in state funding are automatically triggered later this year.
School board President Richard Barrera blames the state for the financial crisis and looks to the state for help. “The reason (for the crisis) is because the Legislature and the governors in California have decided that they would rather make cuts to public education than raise taxes on wealthy individuals and large corporations,” he says.
Despite the crisis, the district continues to hire back teachers whose layoff notices were rescinded four months ago. And blaming the state ignores past board decisions to continue to grant automatic step increases in pay for many teachers and to approve phased-in raises of 7.2 percent for all employees beginning next school year. And it ignores the reality that the state is in no position to bail out San Diego Unified or the many other California districts in turmoil.
But it serves little purpose now for the district to point fingers of blame, or for angry, skeptical parents and the teachers union to label district warnings as crying wolf.
The reality is there isn’t enough money. The reality also is that 90 percent of general spending by the district goes to compensation. It is unfair to all and a shame for the students, but, barring an unexpected bailout by the state, school closures, transportation, class sizes and, yes, compensation all have to be put on the table.
Now is the time, beginning tonight, for the board, staff, teachers, parents, the broader community and state officials to come together to save San Diego Unified as best they can.
The renewed warnings of impending insolvency of city schools pose what is probably the greatest financial challenge for the district since the Great Depression, and possibly since the district’s first school opened in August 1854 in a rented room with a single teacher paid $40 a month. None of today’s financial options are good, none of the possible solutions easy. The current level of quality education for 131,500 children on more than 180 campuses with some 6,600 teachers is threatened.
The school board tonight will hear details of staff’s recommendation to close, consolidate or relocate dozens of schools next year and is expected to discuss the impact of insolvency on California’s second-largest district. Options such as the sale of district real estate and dramatic cutbacks in what’s left of the school bus program will also be outlined and updated. No decision on school closures is expected until December.
San Diego Unified faces a deficit next year in its $1 billion operating budget of between $60 million and $118 million, with the worst-case scenario looming if additional cutbacks in state funding are automatically triggered later this year.
School board President Richard Barrera blames the state for the financial crisis and looks to the state for help. “The reason (for the crisis) is because the Legislature and the governors in California have decided that they would rather make cuts to public education than raise taxes on wealthy individuals and large corporations,” he says.
Despite the crisis, the district continues to hire back teachers whose layoff notices were rescinded four months ago. And blaming the state ignores past board decisions to continue to grant automatic step increases in pay for many teachers and to approve phased-in raises of 7.2 percent for all employees beginning next school year. And it ignores the reality that the state is in no position to bail out San Diego Unified or the many other California districts in turmoil.
But it serves little purpose now for the district to point fingers of blame, or for angry, skeptical parents and the teachers union to label district warnings as crying wolf.
The reality is there isn’t enough money. The reality also is that 90 percent of general spending by the district goes to compensation. It is unfair to all and a shame for the students, but, barring an unexpected bailout by the state, school closures, transportation, class sizes and, yes, compensation all have to be put on the table.
Now is the time, beginning tonight, for the board, staff, teachers, parents, the broader community and state officials to come together to save San Diego Unified as best they can.
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