[img]1705|left|Mr. Mike Reynolds||no_popup[/img]No one in the School District office flinched several weeks ago when Gov. Brown announced that the good, old days of fairness, evenhanded dealing, had crashed and burned to death.
Mr. Nice Guy was to be supplanted by Mr. Partisan Guy.
Hereafter, said Mr. Brown, California schools with hefty proportions of poor kids and English learners would receive larger per-pupil handouts from Sacramento than richer boys and girls who knew English like the back of their bank accounts.
It was a takeoff on President Obama’s demand that the well-to-do pay his notion of their fair share.
Culver City was undisturbed by Gov. Brown’s tilted edict, and Mike Reynolds, Assistant Superintendent/Business, talked about why by unveiling a surprising statistic.
“If you add the two groups together,” he said, the governor’s formula “probably 50 percent of our students would be in one category or the other.
Who Knew?
“A lot of people are not familiar with that fact,” Mr. Reynolds said.
Fiscally, not to mention theoretically, his revelation is good news.
“We would assume that if the governor’s proposal were to be adopted by the Legislature, that we would probably receive a little more money per student.
“I don’t know how much more because it is just a proposal right now.”
Presently, Culver City receives $6700 in funding per student from the state.
Once again, though, that is true only in arcane theory.
Mr. Reynolds explains:
“Sixty-seven hundred, but then they ‘deficit’ it. They take away 22 percent that we never see.”
For years, District leaders have said that Culver City’s portion is $6700. But it actually is $5400.
“The state always says they don’t have enough money,” Mr. Reynolds said.
“This (subtle subtraction) started years ago. At first, the state took away a tiny fraction. But when they had real trouble, they increased the amount until it has reached 22 percent of the amount we are supposed to receive.
“We are not sure, nobody is really positive what the governor’s new funding formula would give any particular district,” said Mr. Reynolds. “Numbers are out there. You can kind of calculate the theoretical amount.
“But right now, the whole thing is just a proposal. It could change significantly between now and July 1,” the fiscal New Year.
