Schools among the hardest hit by budget cuts

Paul Clinton

Local school officials are pinching their pennies after Gov. Gray

Davis announced a new round of cuts earlier this month that should

sheer more funding from their budgets.

Davis announced the across-the-board cuts on Jan. 10 as part of a

revised budget to reduce a potential $30-billion budget shortfall.

Schools will lose the most under this proposal, which would cut

$5.4 billion from school districts across California.

“It will be difficult for every district,” said Wendy Margarita,

Orange County’s assistant superintendent of business services. “It’s

very severe. In the last 12 years I’ve been here, it’s the most

dramatic I’ve seen.”

The county’s Department of Education acts as the intermediary for

state funding to local districts.

The county doesn’t approve the funding, but essentially cuts the

checks to the Huntington Beach City School District, Huntington Beach

Union High School District and Ocean View School District.

Leaders at each of the three local districts are now looking at

ways to scale back spending in the midst of a school year in which

much of the expected money has already been spent.

Ocean View stands to lose $1.79 million if its $65-million general

fund budget this year, said Marylou Beckmann, the director of fiscal

services.

The effect, a 2.8% drop, is expected to be lessened somewhat since

the district has already reigned in expenditures, Beckmann said.

“We don’t have to reduce dollar for dollar,” she said. “Some of it

we haven’t appropriated yet.”

Officials at Huntington Beach City School District expect to have

$1.4 million less to work with this year out of a $43-million budget,

Assistant Supt. of Administrative Services David Perry said. That

would be a 3.26% drop in revenue.

Perry, and others in the district, will face a tough public

relations task when they propose cuts to their board next month,

since the district is in the midst of a $47-million upgrade of its

auditoriums and gyms. That money comes from a $30-million bond

approved by voters in March and $17 million in state matching funds.

“We can’t use bond money for anything but capital improvements,”

Perry said.

Officials at the city’s high school district declined to release

specific details about how much they could potentially lose in Davis’

latest proposal.

The district, which manages four high schools, manages a

$126-million budget, said Patricia Koch, the assistant superintendent

of business services.

“We are analyzing the governor’s proposal,” Koch said. “We had to

do layoffs last spring in order to balance our budget last year.”