Two elementary schools could be closed next year as the school
board braces for the worst budget shortfall the district has
experienced, even while it grapples with the current year’s budget
shortfall brought on by the state.
Two elementary schools could be closed next year as the school board braces for the worst budget shortfall the district has experienced, even while it grapples with the current year’s budget shortfall brought on by the state.
All are extreme measures that would cut costs dramatically. School board officials have only begun to take a serious look at cost savings.
Morgan Hill Unified School District Deputy Superintendent Bonnie Tognazzini expects next year to look much worse than the current one, which has seen $3 million in cuts already while district officials look at $2.6 million more.
“Frankly, we don’t even know about this year yet,” Tognazzini said. “But Gov. (Arnold) Schwarzenegger has called it ‘financial Armageddon, which is just horrifying.”
News from the state’s doomsday effect was apparent Tuesday night as the board accepted staff’s mid-year recommendations, which included socking away a surplus $575,000 to use towards mid-year cuts or to cushion next year’s expected revenue decline.
“Cash is king, it will be the only thing to keep the district solvent. It will be up to us, there’s no money anywhere else,” Trustee Shelle Thomas said.
Superintendent Alan Nishino said, “Unless something doesn’t change soon, we’re in real trouble.”
When trustees adopted the district’s $72 million budget in June, it was with $3 million in cuts that translated to 14 layoffs.
Tognazzini expects mid-year cuts to be about $2.6 million, based on the latest rumors from state legislators that the state would keep $300 per student of state money. The mid-year cuts are buffered this year by the aforementioned $576,000 and possible special exceptions from the state, including one-time flexibility in spending categorical money towards the general fund.
The report the Board of Education received Tuesday night was already dated, Tognazzini said, as district officials are working with a moving target and the state may not have a finalized budget until March. For example, the $2.6 million the board is lamenting over wasn’t reflected in the mid-year report at all, Tognazzini said.
Newly elected Board President Don Moody said he felt “pretty good” about the district’s financial status so far.
“It’s hard to get real emotional until you get a number you can hang your hat on,” he said.
Moody said it’s prudent to start looking at options for next year now.
This year, the district is spending $4.6 million more than it’s bringing in, Tognazzini said. While the district had set aside money last year to be spent this year, they won’t again have that money. Further, officials are already looking at an additional $800,000 toward district salaries from mandatory union step-and-column increases, she said. Tognazzini said she and staff are “working in the dark” this year, and have no idea what curveballs the state will throw at districts next year, so officials have begun to analyze closing one or possibly two elementary schools, cutting support services and administration, transportation, class size increases and program reductions, which could include library, music and athletics – each of which are not core curriculum, she said.
Tognazzini declined to say which school or schools was being considered for closing.
Closing a school or two is not a “foregone conclusion,” Moody said.
“It would have to result in some significant savings. We’ll be looking to see what kind of savings could be realized if we closed a school,” he said.
Tognazzini said that when Encinal Elementary School closed in 2004, the district saved about $400,000 a year. But that was an entirely different situation in which Los Paseos Elementary School absorbed all the students and staff from Encinal; the two went from a kindergarten through third grade and a fourth through sixth grade to one elementary for kindergarten through sixth grade.
