GILROY
– School board officials recently examined the final numbers
from the state’s 2003-04 budget, and although Gilroy schools made
it through this year’s cuts relatively unscathed, officials expect
the district will suffer when more cuts are made midyear and for
2004-05.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – School board officials recently examined the final numbers from the state’s 2003-04 budget, and although Gilroy schools made it through this year’s cuts relatively unscathed, officials expect the district will suffer when more cuts are made midyear and for 2004-05.
“Things are going to be very, very tight. It’s going to be very tough,” Superintendent Edwin Diaz said. “Now, we’re getting down to the point where it’s going to have a real drastic impact on the programs we deliver, unless there is some relief from the state.”
The state reduced the amount of daily per-student funding for the first time in three years, while also cutting billions from the categorical programs.
In tight times, the state can cut school funding by reducing the amount of money districts get per student or by cutting funds designated for specific programs, such as maintenance or instructional materials. The state usually makes cuts in one of the two areas.
“What happened this year is (budget cuts) were so bad that they happened in both areas,” Diaz said.
Instead of getting the expected 1.86 percent increase in per-student funding, GUSD is actually seeing a decrease of 1.2 percent. This means GUSD will receive funding equal to $4,641 per student, while last year it received $4,699 – a difference of $57.
Districts are entitled to see an increase in per-student funding each year based on cost-of-living adjustments. Those adjustments are based on inflation and other economic indicators, including the consumer price index.
“We haven’t seen a decline like this since ’99-2000 when there was a state deficit,” said Lee White, assistant superintendent of administrative services.
Cost-of-living adjustments, COLA, are often impacted first during tight economic times, and further reductions by the state can greatly impact core programs, Diaz said.
“COLA is what we use to pay all our operational costs in the district,” Diaz said, “so when we have less of that it has a big impact.”
GUSD was able to deal with the state’s cuts to programs without too much impact this year, Diaz said.
For instance, the state cut money for providing instructional materials to districts by $225 million, but Gilroy schools have already purchased new state standards-based textbooks.
“We were very fortunate in that we (completed) our language arts and math adoption the last two years,” Diaz said. “We were able to take advantage of the state materials fund when there was money.”
As for future cuts, district officials declined to speculate on specific cuts but expect to see midyear cuts for the third year in a row with more cuts coming next year.
