EDUCATION: MBUSD approves 2023-24 budget

Over 80 percent of district spending is for personnel costs. Graph courtesy MBUSD

by Alana Reyes 

The word “uncertainty” reverberated through the room like a broken record at the last two Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Education meetings as district leaders discussed the district’s proposed 2023-24 budget. 

The MBUSD Board of Education voted to approve a budget on June 22, despite the uncertainties expected to sustain until the state’s budget bill was passed at the end of the month. The local budget was adopted eight days before Governor Gavin Newsom’s deadline to sign the California legislation, which left MBUSD in the uncomfortable position of making a budget without knowing what district revenues would be. Nearly 80 percent of MBUSD funding emanates from the state, including most of its $100 million general fund. 

“[The uncertainty] is largely due to the fact that taxes aren’t due until October,” said MBUSD deputy superintendent Dawnalyn Murakawa-Leopard at the presentation of the budget to the Board. “The governor’s projections are higher than what the legislative analyst office suggests and the Legislature’s projections are higher even than that.”

Newsom’s optimistic projections for revenue contested the Legislature’s lower expectations, resulting in a large disparity in suggested cuts in the arts, music and instructional materials and learning recovery block grant programs. 

“Uncertainty is the name of the game especially as we’re watching both the governor and our state legislators duke out some of these trailer bills,” said school board trustee Tina Shivpuri.

Following the recommendation of the Los Angeles County Office of Education, the MBUSD Board adopted the governor’s larger reductions in their total.

“We’re assuming that [the larger cuts] are going to happen so it’s built into our budget right now that we’re gonna see this reduction,” said Murakawa-Leopard.

But on June 30, the Newsom administration and the Legislature came to a compromise in the revised signed bill that took effect on July 1.

Recent raised projections for tax funds enabled the Legislature to substantially reduce the level of proposed education reductions in the bill Newsom signed. A cut of $1.8 billion from the arts, music and instructional materials grant was curtailed to only $200 million and $900 million was spared from the original $2.5 billion cut in the learning recovery block grant in the budget’s recent rewrite.

The updated budget for 2023-24 is $1.5 billion more than Newsom’s proposed plan in January. And like his proposal, it includes an historically high 8.2 percent cost of living increase for public schools. With these major developments in numbers, MBUSD will have time to adapt to the new legislation if they see necessary.

“We will have 45 days from the day the governor signs the budget bill to bring a proposed budget revision,” said Murakawa-Leopard.

The school board faces further uncertainty regarding upcoming attendance relief policies, proposed changes to student to teacher ratios, minimum wage increases and enrollment concerns. Additionally, the district’s parcel tax, which generates $2.5 million annually, is set to expire next year. 

Murakawa-Leopard emphasized the importance of enrollment, which is the basis of the Average Daily Attendance (ADA) funding districts receive from the state. 

“There’s a statewide decline [in enrollment] of 8.27 percent projected and here in LA County we are the second steepest decline,” said Murakawa-Leopard.

But MBUSD’s projections actually show a slight increase in enrollment numbers, which district officials hope to sustain. 

The Board will revisit the budget this summer and make adjustments based on the the state budget adoption. ER 

 

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