The head of the Financial Oversight Committee warned the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s Board of Education that there is a “dire road” ahead in face of budget cuts and what needs to be explored and achieved to correct budget shortfalls for the fiscal 2011/12 year.
FOC head Carol Wagner spoke at the board’s meeting last night in Santa Monica District Headquarters.
Most of the school district’s funding comes from the state government on a per student basis. That funding will be up in the air until July 1, when the state produces its budget for the 2011-12 fiscal year. Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed extending temporary income, vehicle and sales taxes. Those must be passed by a two-thirds majority in the Legislature and then approved by voters. If the tax extensions fail, school district CFO Jan Maez has predicted cuts ranging from $330 to $350 per student, which would total about $3.6 million, to a worst-case scenario of $1,000 per student, with cuts totaling more than $10 million.
Three schoolteachers were laid off earlier this year, including one at Malibu High School, and 11 more employees of the district in the Child Development Services Department were laid off last month.
In addition, last month the board voted to explore placing an emergency parcel tax proposal before Santa Monica and Malibu voters to help alleviate the budget crisis, and approved layoff notices for 11 employees.
Also at last night’s board meeting, a representative for the district school nurses championed employing a 9.6 nurse plan and urged the board to adopt it. They did, along with the flexibility of using the superintendent’s recommended modified version, which is the nine nurse plan but more switching off between the nurses and trained health clerks on a full-time basis, rather than alternating the nurses on a part-time basis.