Another domino is falling. The failed San Diego School district is now admitting to massive deficits, to go along with its falling test scores, loss of enrollment and higher teacher pay.
“The budget for the San Diego Unified’s 2022 – 2023 school year was unanimously approved by the board at its June 27 meeting. But during that meeting, officials projected a looming $128.9 million deficit in the 2024 – 2025 year. It also projected the deficit would continue to expand the year after that, ballooning to $182 million.
The projected deficit comes from a confluence of factors: One-time Covid money is running out, school funding from the state decreased this year and enrollment and average daily attendance continue to decline. But another factor is rising costs, including increased staff pay.
Need more reason for school choice? Remember, this district teaches race hatred and sexual grooming.
| The Learning Curve: San Diego Unified Is Projecting Big Budget Deficits By Jakob McWhinney, Voice of San Diego, 7/5/23 https://voiceofsandiego.org/2023/07/05/the-learning-curve-san-diego-unified-is-projecting-big-budget-deficits/?utm_source=Voice+of+San+Diego+Master+List&utm_campaign=fb5365861d-Learning_Curve&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c2357fd0a3-fb5365861d-81866633&goal=0_c2357fd0a3-fb5365861d-81866633 |
| The budget for the San Diego Unified’s 2022 – 2023 school year was unanimously approved by the board at its June 27 meeting. But during that meeting, officials projected a looming $128.9 million deficit in the 2024 – 2025 year. It also projected the deficit would continue to expand the year after that, ballooning to $182 million. The projected deficit comes from a confluence of factors: One-time Covid money is running out, school funding from the state decreased this year and enrollment and average daily attendance continue to decline. But another factor is rising costs, including increased staff pay. The district recently inked a three-year deal with the teachers union that included a 5 percent pay increase for employees beginning next year and a retroactive 10 percent pay increase that goes back to July 2022. All told, the deal will cost the district around $517 million. The cost of the retroactive pay increase alone amounts to around $130 million, Maureen Magee, the district’s communications director wrote in an email. Granting a pay increase while also projecting a deficit may seem incongruous to some, board member Cody Petterson acknowledged at a recent board meeting. “When you see these outyear projections it’s a little scary for us as a board and leadership team, and then you see the negotiations we’ve had with our labor partners,” Petterson said. But to attract and retain staff, he said, the district needed to offer raises. “There’s no way we can have high quality staff without doing that,” he said. While the projected deficit is daunting, board member Richard Barrera said the district is used to deficits like this. “This is my fifteenth year on the board, and every year when we look out over the following couple of years, we project a budget deficit,” Barrera said. “It’s the reality of running public schools in California, which has chronically underfunded public education.” The History: Back in the 2017 – 2018 school year, the district had to plug a $124 million budgetary hole. Its path to doing so included the layoffs of nearly 200 employees, though the exact number was hard to come by. But Barrera and fellow board member Shana Hazan are confident the district will be able to balance the budget, and that it won’t have to resort to layoffs this time around. “If we need to reduce staff to maintain sort of the same ratios as enrollment and [average daily attendance] decline the district is very, very skilled at figuring out how to do that without laying people off,” Barrera said. Taking advantage of retirements and staff attrition is one way to get there, he said. District leaders have floated a hiring and spending freeze and reductions in central office staff to plug the budget hole. They’ve also floated attempting to increase average daily attendance in the new post-Covid era of skyrocketing chronic absenteeism. Officials hope leaning into universal transitional kindergarten and the hiring of 14 family services assistants that work to support students can help them make headway on that goal. Another potential strategy is to cut back on some as-of-yet unnamed programs. Barrera said that prospect would be unfortunate. “Our students and our families are facing more stress than they ever have, so the needs are greater than they’ve ever been,” Barrera said. “The federal Covid fund temporarily provided the level of funding that our schools have always needed, but that money is going away.” Much is still unknown about what’s to come. California could increase funding for schools, as it has done in some past years. But with public school enrollment projected to continue falling, the current outlook is gloomy. “This is a roadmap for sweating. We’re going to have to sweat a bit,” Petterson said. |
