District officials are unclear of how Proposition 1B, aimed to
secure state paybacks to schools starting in 2011/12, will affect
Morgan Hill’s schools.
District officials are unclear of how Proposition 1B, aimed to secure state paybacks to schools starting in 2011/12, will affect Morgan Hill’s schools.
If the proposition passes on May 19, the state would pay back school districts about $9.3 billion over a five- to six-year period beginning in 2011/12 to make up for recent budget cuts, according to the League of Women Voters.
If Proposition 1A doesn’t pass, Prop 1B will not go into effect.
That’s because Prop 1A would extend for one year new taxes aimed at fixing this year’s budget crunch, like the additional 1 percent sales tax and the across-the-board 0.25 percent personal income tax increase. These taxes are currently set to expire in 2011 or earlier; extending them would bring about $16 billion into state coffers.
Another major component of Prop 1A is that legislators would be allowed to boost the state’s reserve from $8 billion to $12 billion.
Prop’s 1A and 1B, along with four other propositions, were placed on the May 19 ballot as part of state legislators’ plan to remedy California’s $42-billion budget problems in the short term and in the long-term, Assemblyman Bill Monning said.
Morgan Hill Unified School District Deputy Superintendent Bonnie Tognazzini said the state can expect the current budget shortfall to balloon from $8 billion to $14 billion if the propositions don’t pass.
While Tognazzini couldn’t speak to Prop 1B specifically, she has forewarned the Board of Trustees that money guaranteed to schools from the state’s propositions or the federal government’s stimulus package would likely come with strings attached.
Over the past 24 months, the Morgan Hill Unified School District Board of Trustees concluded making cuts totaling nearly $9 million, about a 10 percent chunk of the general fund.
Monning recognized that this funding is just a start to get California back to an adequate level of spending. He noted that California ranks almost last in the nation in per pupil spending.
“Education is at the core of our state’s future,” Monning said. “If we don’t spend more on education spending, we’ll pay more in the backend. High school dropouts are more likely to end up in the criminal justice system. Right now, we’re spending more right now on the incarceration system than the higher education system. One way to reverse those trends is to support 1B.”
Two-thirds of the $9 million in budget cuts were one-time dollars, Tognazzini said.
