The November ballot will not only decide the future president, but also the future of California’s budget-constrained schools and the quality of education across the state. Locally Redondo Beach is looking at a potential bond to add to the ballot to fill a $2 million shortfall from the district’s $67 million budget, upgrade the district’s energy usage with solar power and allocate funds to propel the district’s classrooms into the 21st century.
“We need to move forward and make sure we make the investment to start making a serious change to transform the way our students learn [and] to leave the industrial revolution in the past and move forward and change the way learning goes on in our school system,” said School Board member Drew Gamet.
The board, with support of the local unions, the PTA and Redondo Beach Unified School District parents, is attempting to move forward and strategically plan how to market yet another bond to an already education-tax-heavy ballot and money-strapped community.
“The time for leadership is now,” said school board vice president Laura Emdee. “[We] need to be prepared for state funding situations and need to be proactive instead of reactive on this thing.”
The bond would be competing against two state-wide initiatives. Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax for schools initiative would raise the state’s sales tax by .5 cents for four years and allocate 89 percent of the revenues to K-12 schools and 11 percent to community colleges. It would also increase income tax on annual earnings over $250,000 for five years. Another state initiative, civil attorney Molly Munger’s California State Income Tax Increase to Support Public Education Initiative, also known as Proposition 38, will likewise be on the November ballot, and if passed would increase public education funding by $7 billion a year and allocate $3 billion toward state bond repayment by increasing income tax for 12 years.
“My proposal is straightforward and fair,” Brown wrote in an open letter to the people of California in December 2011. “It proposes a temporary tax increase on the wealthy, a modest and temporary increase in the sales tax and guarantees that the new revenues be spent only on education.”
Although all initiatives and bonds could be passed by the voters, the RBUSD school board is worried that with so many proposed taxes for education, Redondo Beach voters may overlook one or all of the ballot boxes, forcing the RBUSD into yet another financial quandary. Instead of relying on the initiatives passing, RBUSD is preparing for a worst-case scenario budget.
“We’re in charge of making sure the district is financially stable and our constituents expect a top notch school district,” said Emdee. “We’ve eaten away our reserve to absolute minimum and can no longer absorb the funding inconsistencies.”
According to Emdee, if the governor’s initiative does not pass, the school district can expect $3.8 million in cuts, which according to Emdee, is equivalent to losing 19 school days. If the initiative does pass, she said that they are technically in the same spot.
“We’re just hanging on, waiting for the next wave to break,” said Emdee.
Additionally, according to Emdee, if the state tax initiatives do pass, RBUSD will not see the funding added to the district’s coffers until the end of the 2013 school year.
“We’re kind of screwed in 2012-13,” said Emdee. “In the meantime we have to deal with the shortfall and wait for the money to come in. So our best-case scenario for 2012-13 is flat funding and we’ve lost $6 million over the last four years, so [there’s] very little fat to trim and no reserve to create a 21st century classroom.”
For RBUSD, if the initiatives don’t pass and a bond is not floated, there could potentially be a month less of school, greatly-increased class sizes, or both. The school district is currently trying to coordinate with the three unions and teachers’ association to write a worst-case scenario trigger cut, to be prepared for the future. In past years they have come to the table to agree upon up to four furlough days, but the worst-case scenario budget revenue was never triggered. This year however, is a different situation altogether.
“This is a very difficult sell. [It’s a] very nuanced thing because it’s not something you can see or touch, and we’re spending money to save money and that’s a hard thing to communicate to people,” said board member Todd Loewenstein. “We live and breathe this; most people are not paying attention. They send their kids to school in the morning, they help with homework, they participate in PTA, but they don’t deal with school finances. This is a very nuanced concept and we need to figure out if were going to do this … it’s very tough.”
Gamet said he isn’t excited about asking the voters for more money because of the economic downturn, “We have modernized to a wonderful degree with the stuff that everyone sees and the stuff everyone is used to, but now we can go forward to the next thing and give our students the tools to prepare for jobs that don’t yet exist; I can get excited for that.”
The bond, if passed, would cost voters an approximate $24 per $100,000 assessed value of their homes, but the specifics have not yet been agreed upon.
“It’s minimal for what we’re going to get,” said board member Jane Diehl. “[I] think it’s something that we’re [doing that’s] proactive in trying to bring money back into the district to take care of the $2 million loss and a possible $3.6 or $3.8 million [loss] in November, if not more, because we don’t know what’s going to happen. [It’s] something we need to do to be proactive.”
At first Emdee said she couldn’t imagine asking the voters for the bond, “But the survey in May said the voters are with us, really want an education in Redondo Beach that is top notch and they expect the leadership to provide it.”
The next step for the board is to draft a resolution for consideration of the bond. Due to time constraints for November’s ballot, the board scheduled a special meeting next Tuesday, July 31 at 6 p.m. to further discuss the measure.
“Think we can do this,” said Emdee. “[We can] use this opportunity to explain our budget situation and this is the time … we need everyone on board to make it work, and if we work together we can make sure Redondo students win.” ER
