With the beginning of the new year, the district has implemented several cost containment policies as part of a spending control plan. These changes were primarily made as a result of a lack of funding.
Last year, the district received an estimated actual budget of $300,977,422.00, $201,355,983.00 coming from California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) sources, $35,625,473.00 coming from federal revenue, $36,395,678.00 coming from other state revenue and $27,600,288.00 coming from other local revenue.
However, the estimated budget for this year is significantly lower than the estimated actuals from the last school year. This year, the district’s estimated budget is $268,589,869.00, $196,166,062.00 coming from LCFF sources, $10,938,450.00 coming from federal revenue, $35,525,897.00 coming from other state revenue and $25,959,460.00 coming from other local revenue. Based on these numbers, this year the district’s budget decreased by $32,387,553.00 from last year’s estimated actuals.
This decrease in funding has had several consequences. In place of Illuminate for instance, students took beginning-of-the-year diagnostic tests for English and math through iReady. Several departments have been affected by this decrease in budget, including the Theater Department and the Career Technical Education Department which have faced cuts in their supply budgets.
“I dislike the decision to replace Illuminate with iReady. The district pays in order to provide the program, iReady, for students however, I feel that money can go into other departments of our education like extracurriculars and so forth,” said senior Vincent Gomez “Illuminate was a more reliable, cohesive program than iReady, a slow and inefficient system.”
Declining enrollment is one of the contributing factors to this deficit of budget. From the last school year, enrollment declined by 2.1%. As a result of this issue, the district lost $5.2 million dollars in LCFF resources, which utilizes student attendance to determine fund allocation. This drop in enrollment led to fewer funds being allocated towards the district, which in turn affects the money distributed to each school in the district.
Another reason that has contributed to this decrease in funding is a lack of parents filling out the Alternate Income Form. The form is used to collect household income information from students to determine eligible federal funds allocated to school districts. For the 2023-24 school year, 59.31% of parents filled out the Alternate Income Form. This year, just 48.87% of parents filled out the Alternate Income Form.
Other factors that have contributed to these new changes include the 2024-25 state cost-of-living adjustment being 1.07%, increased fixed costs and the end of COVID-era funding.
“As a school, we will continue to make every effort to provide a high-quality instructional program and make the necessary adjustments for us to stay financially solvent,” Principal Diana Ferguson said.
In addition to the spending control plan, the district’s next steps include analyzing budget projections at first interim and adjusting accordingly.
