GILROY
– Calling it the most severe state budget crisis he has seen in
his education career, Superintendent Edwin Diaz has ordered an
immediate hiring freeze in the Gilroy Unified School District.
GILROY – Calling it the most severe state budget crisis he has seen in his education career, Superintendent Edwin Diaz has ordered an immediate hiring freeze in the Gilroy Unified School District. There are currently nine job openings, from substitute and full-time teachers to a school nurse position, listed on the district’s Web site.
The decision comes amid ongoing contract negotiations between the district and its teachers for this year. Of the $67.7 million district budget, $52.9 million – a full 78 percent – goes to pay teacher salaries and benefits.
District officials are bracing themselves for a 3.66 percent across the board reduction in education spending, amounting to a $100-per-student loss of state revenue. Based on the most recent GUSD enrollment number of 9,630 students, the mid-year loss amounts to nearly $1 million.
“This budget crisis is so severe that virtually everything is on the table to be reduced,” Diaz said. “I’ve been in education for 27 years. I’ve heard the doom and gloom pitches before, but I’ve never actually felt one like this.”
The budget cut is the second mid-year slice in as many years and, according to the information Diaz has acquired, cuts for 2003-04 are anticipated as well.
“Add this year’s cuts up with what could happen for next year, and we could be looking at a $300 per student reduction,” Diaz said.
Diaz declined to speculate on specific cuts he will propose to trustees as early as Dec. 19, the date of the next regular school board session, as he continues to meet with high-level district staff to discuss spending priorities for this year and beyond. But he said that everything, including teacher layoffs, would be “on the table.”
Diaz said some school districts in the state have talked about ending school two weeks early and granting furloughs to their staff. Diaz said such a reaction was not being considered locally – at least for now.
The state is facing a $30-billion shortfall in revenue. Late last week Gov. Gray Davis proposed a slew of other cuts, from transportation to health care, totalling $10.2 billion in savings. His proposal will be reviewed – and almost certainly revised – by the state legislature over the next month.
To ease the financial burden, district officials are hoping that the final state legislation provides flexibility in certain spending requirements. For instance, the state could change its mandatory kindergarten through third-grade student-to-teacher ratio of 20-to-1, allowing more students per classroom if the school or district average remains 20-to-1, explained Trustee David McRae.
While the budget information is troubling to the recently elected school board trustee, McRae says the information is not a surprise.
“Anyone familiar with the economic climate could see this coming,” McRae said. “I feel the district has made itself well aware of the problem, and they’re working on it.”
McRae, who campaigned on his experience in managing large budgets, has some clear ideas on how to absorb the budget cuts without directly impacting classroom education.
“Nothing should be stopped that is safety and (classroom) education related,” said McRae, a Stanford University facilities and operations department supervisor.
McRae would rather see money saved by deferring expenditures on items such as equipment.
“For example, if you were scheduled to get a new Pentium IV computer, but your old 486 can get you through another year, then put off that upgrade another year,” McRae explained.
Despite the lean economic times, district officials are saying its $154 million facilities improvement plan – $44 million of which comes from the state – will move ahead as scheduled.
“It appears the cuts will not affect the facilities master plan because it’s funded by local voter-authorized tax levies, developer fees and other voter-authorized taxes at the state level,” said Lee White, the GUSD’s Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services.
White acknowledges the severity of the proposed cuts, but says she doesn’t believe it is time to go into panic mode.
“We had mid-year budget cuts last year from the state, too. What was put out last year (in the governor’s proposal) was so different from what was actually implemented (by the legislature),” White points out.
