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Sonoma schools eye $2.1 million in cuts for 2012-13

 

Sonoma Valley Unified School District administrators are wasting no time setting up meetings for input on how to cut $2.1 million from the 2012-13 budget.

At Tuesday night's school board meeting, Deputy Superintendent Justin Frese put out a timeline with the initial meeting to take place the second week in September with principals and directors to identify possible reductions, and ending with a special board meeting sometime in January.

In addition to the regular board meetings, Frese has tentatively scheduled seven meetings with various stakeholders, including principals, directors, staff and the community.

The cuts are necessary because of California's continuing budget brouhaha, and the fact that the district will have to send Sacramento a check this year, next year and years into the foreseeable future, for about $2.6 million as its "fair share."

The state is demanding an 8.9 percent "fair share" kickback from "basic aid" districts, which are those districts receiving all of their money in property taxes and other taxes, as opposed to a revenue-limit district that receives state aid to make up the difference between property taxes and state funding levels. Only about 10 percent of the state's school districts are basic aid districts.

Frese told the school board that the district should have about a $2.95 million balance at the end of this financial year, which ends June 30.

In the budget Frese presented to the board, the district will tentatively outspend revenues by more than $2.6 million this coming fiscal year and more than $2.9 million in 2012-13, leaving the district with more than $2.6 million in red ink by the end of the 2012-13 fiscal year.