Along with guidance from a County fiscal advisor, the Gilroy Unified School District passed a list of $2 million in budget cuts for next school year, including the elimination of all library clerks.
Cutting all of GUSD’s part-time library clerk staff (which, when combined, is the equivalent of 4.25 full-time positions) won’t impact students or the classroom, maintained Fiscal Advisor Nimrat Johal for the Santa Clara County Office of Education. Johal was assigned to the district earlier this year to help GUSD work through cash flow issues and concerns with the district’s business office.
Eliminating library clerks will save the district $184,270 for the upcoming school year, according to GUSD’s draft budget.
“I truly don’t believe that any of these cuts will have an impact on the students, which was my goal from the beginning,” Johal said.
The cuts also include elimination of seven janitors, a food services position, one behavioral specialist from the special education department, the entire adult education program (which is being transferred to Gavilan College’s hands) and several part-time positions in the district office.
GUSD and Johal spent the last few months brainstorming lists of potential cuts for the upcoming school year and finalized a list together that was voted on April 25 by the Board of Education.
GUSD’s financial problems came to a crux in December when the Santa Clara County Office of Education swooped in and took control because of problems with fiscal oversight, administrative errors, missed payments and a remarkably high staff turnover coming from the district’s business office.
In a letter to GUSD dated Jan. 23, the SCCOE wrote they were “concerned about the district’s overall deficient fiscal oversight, state of turmoil in both managerial and staff-level positions, and a lack of accountability in the district’s ability to effectively manage its finances.”
Johal said GUSD is making “excellent progress” in their endeavors to be released from the county to fiscal independence.
“The district is well on its way to recovery,” Johal said during a May 16 board meeting. “I’ll be playing a nominal role from here on out.”
Flores made it clear that the elimination of library clerks does not mean that school libraries are closing or reducing hours. There won’t be a clerk to help students locate books, but because the clerks are already part-time (many schools within the district already do without library clerks, and the schools that still have clerks use them for very limited hours), Flores said this won’t significantly affect students.
“The students go to the library when they are accompanied by a teacher or another staff member who helps them locate books. Libraries in our district are not the same as drop-in public libraries. Many of our schools already have no, or very limited library clerk hours,” Flores said.
Flores said that Johal helped the district find other “out of the box” ways to save money, such as eliminating a full time teacher support position and creating three part-time stipend positions, which saves the district $64,435. This also allows the district to hire one advisor who specializes in each level of education (elementary, middle and high school) so they can offer more specific support for teachers, Flores said.
GUSD also finalized on April 25 $174,056 in cuts to the district office, which includes the elimination of expulsion coordinators, a nurse consultant, a special education program specialist, a testing consultant and administrator coaches.
“I’ll be the first to say this is going to be very difficult,” Flores said. “It means those left in the district office will have to take on more work.”
The cuts for next year have been finalized, but there is a chance they can be restored if more state funding begins to flow to GUSD via Governor Jerry Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula, which designates funding for school districts who have large populations of low-income, ESL and foster children.
“We would be thrilled to have that additional revenue,” Flores said.
But the district is going to not jump to restoring any cuts until January, when they will know for sure if and when money is headed their direction, as recommended by Johal.
“We don’t want to get into position of spending money we don’t have, so we’re going to be very cautious in restoring anything,” Flores said.
She also reiterated that GUSD is “ending this school year with a balanced budget, with our required reserve and with funds for the board to designate for specific purposes.”
The GUSD Board of Trustees is gathering June 6 to discuss their priorities for restoration if funding were to appear.
For a complete list of GUSD’s budget cuts, visit gilroydispatch.com.
