[Editor’s Note: The School Board meets at 7 this evening in the District Offices on Irving Place.]
[img]1705|right|Mr. Reynolds||no_popup[/img]To better understand the tenor of this evening’s School Board meeting, the audience would be well-advised to shlep salt shakers.
When Mike Reynolds, assistant superintendent for business, begins his presentation of the usually anticipated May Revise report on Gov. Brown’s funding budget, the crowd can take Mr. Reynolds’s words with a grain of what ever is inside the shakers.
Not his fault.
Blame Mr. Brown.
The infamous update of the January budget report, uncolorfully known as the May Revise, is as pulse-pounding as those two words, with an accent on tentativeness.
Don’t start financial planning yet for next year.
Several changes have been made from January, and Mr. Reynolds addressed them.
Counting What Is New
Last January, the governor promised to send schools an amount of money they could spend any way they wished, a rare treat that gave rise to a calculation known as a Local Control Funding Formula.
“Now,” said Mr. Reynolds, “the governor is saying no. He said the money that was supposed to have been reserved has to be spent on programs that serve only English learners and low-income kids.
Mr. Reynolds chuckled, hollowly.
“He is taking it from the most unrestrictive funding source to the most restrictive between January and May.
“Everybody,” says Mr. Reynolds, “is just shaking his head over this.”
How can he evaluate Culver City’s budget in such a liquid situation?
“It’s just a proposal, so it may never come to pass,” he said. “Instead of suddenly having money to do things you have been wanting to do, your hands are tied, and if the money does come to pass as presently configured, it will be restricted. Not only to certain programs, but to certain programs serving only English learners and students from low-income families.
Returning to his list, Mr. Reynolds aid that “it is nice Gov. Brown is going to backfill the money lost to federal sequestration. That is a couple hundred thousand dollars, more or less, for our district.
“Here is something else new, the $170 for ADA (Average Daily Attendance) to kick off common course standards. We like that.
“He still wants to keep Prop.39 money for K-12 schools, and that is a highly debated topic in the Legislature. That is the same as January.”
This peripheral sizeup sounds like a checkerboard, and Mr. Reynolds nodded. “Some new things, and a lot more has stayed the same since January,” he said.
Pass the salt, please.
