SLO County school district plans another $5 million in cuts. See what’s at risk
More than $5 million in staff and services are on the chopping block in the San Luis Coastal school district, as administrators continue to attempt to reverse a multimillion-dollar structural budget deficit.
The deficit has plagued the district and dominated school board discussions over the past year.
The district already approved about $4.7 million in cuts last spring, with some proposals drawing pushback from families and staff. In response to the community outrage, the board delayed some of the cuts in hopes that administrators could find a way to secure additional state funding or revenue in the meantime.
But now, the time has come for the board to begin shaping its budget for next year — and the district has yet to find the money necessary to balance out the massive cuts needed to fill the hole in its checkbook.
What’s causing the district’s budget crisis?
The causes behind the school district’s budget woes are numbered.
Primarily, the district has lost out on tax revenue from PG&E with the depreciation of the Diablo Canyon power plant.
According to a budget document included in Tuesday night’s school board meeting packet, the district’s income from PG&E went from more than $10 million in 2017 to less than $4 million this year, when the power company doled out its final mitigation payment. The district has yet to see what the post-depreciation unitary tax values are for the current school year.
The loss of that income is critical to the district, which gets most of its funding through local property taxes as a basic aid district. San Luis Coastal is one of a few California districts that are not funded by the state’s local control funding formula.
Additionally, because it is not funded by the state, San Luis Coastal missed out on over $5.7 million in funding for transitional kindergarten this year, according to the documents.
Transitional kindergarten has been one of the main tension points for district superintendent Eric Prater, who previously described the program as an unfunded mandate. The district threatened to cut the state-mandated program — which aims to prepare 4-year-olds for kindergarten — last year, but backed out after pushback from parents.
In addition to both those unique factors, the district is also experiencing the same strains that other districts across the state are seeing — including the expiration of COVID-19 relief funding, rising operations and staffing costs and federal uncertainties.
The school district advocated for legislative solutions to both the PG&E funding loss and the transitional kindergarten concerns, but has not yet succeeded in securing funding for either one, leading to the more than $5 million in cuts proposed at Tuesday night’s board meeting.
In a presentation to the board, the district said it would continue to advocate for those funding streams. Action on either one, the district said, would be enough to negate most of the necessary cuts.
A group of SLO parents also recently launched a campaign to secure $7.5 million from PG&E, but the power company responded that restoring the unitary tax would require a legislative solution.
However, the district would be able to accept a donation without legislation.
Budget cuts would affect school staff, services
The cuts proposed Tuesday night included at least 19 full-time staff and even more part-time positions, including both teachers and counselors at the district’s middle and high schools.
In total, $4.2 million in staff reductions were presented.
According to the budget documents, the district proposed cutting seven secondary teachers, three secondary counselors, a groundskeeper, an IT staffer, a custodian, an elementary library media technician, three elementary school counselors, summer coaches and an elementary school athletics coordinator.
The list also included an unspecified number of staff cuts to specific programs, including $1.75 million in cuts to non-classroom aides and $100,000 in administrative cuts for student support services.
The proposed reductions would also cut more than $400,000 for school resource officer contracts with the cities of Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo.
The proposed non-staff reductions included $50,000 from each high school’s athletics budget, $150,000 from music programs, $60,000 from a contract with the University of Washington focused on creating equitable middle and high schools, $43,000 from a civil discourse taskforce, $30,000 from a consultant to help schools serve underrepresented students and more.
The budget documents said the district would focus on maintaining core programs, school transportation, wellness centers, elementary school counseling programs and dual language immersion programs. The district would also make an effort to maintain current elementary school class sizes, which increased after last year’s budget cuts.
The district also listed some potential concerns, including a reduction in security with the loss of school resource officers, reduced counseling support for middle and high schoolers, reduced intervention time and reduced athletics services.
The school board did not take action on the proposals discussed Tuesday night.
According to the budget documents, trustees will vote on budget reduction recommendations at the Dec. 16 board meeting.
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