by Garth Meyer
Word from the district office and school board in Redondo Beach is no significant layoffs are planned in the near future.
Annette Alpern, deputy superintendent, administrative services; and Dan Elder, school board president, detailed the situation for Easy Reader.
Redondo Unified is relatively steady in a time of struggle for neighboring districts.
“It’s hard for me to understand how other districts have been running… I don’t think their situation has come from out of the blue,” Alpern said. “Manhattan Beach Unified is in the bottom five percent and we are in the bottom 10 percent of school funding. I don’t have the exact numbers. It’s the way the Local Control Funding Formula is organized…”
Differentiating factors for RBUSD include that the district is the largest property holder in the city, receiving more than $2 million from leases every year.
“I think that has really helped bolster us,” Alpern said. “I also think our board has been conservative in our approach to our budgets. I can’t speak for other districts, I don’t know… Our labor partners have also been really good partners with us.”
Aside from its school campuses, the RBUSD owns nine other properties in the city, including two parcels with wireless towers.
“It just takes one or two really expensive lawsuits or the loss of enrollment (to cause a district to struggle),” Alpern said. “Things can happen pretty quickly. $1.5 million for a water mainline can throw things off.”
Board President Elder noted that while all area schools are seeing decreasing enrollment, Redondo Beach “had increasing enrollment longer than others.”
As the March 15 layoffs deadline approaches, RBUSD expects one classified staff reduction, but the employee will slide into another job in the district. No teacher layoffs.
Alpern noted that after the ‘80s and ‘90s, when the children of the baby boom generation had all passed through school, many districts sold excess properties, either existing school sites that were closed, or otherwise, and the land was used to build housing.
“Redondo didn’t sell them,” said Alpern, by contrast, who has worked for the district since 2007.
Another difference between RBUSD and other districts is its population of “unduplicated” students. Redondo Beach has 19% while a district such as Manhattan Beach Unified has 8%.
Manhattan Beach has the fourth-lowest schools funding statewide.
Unduplicated numbers translate to supplemental money from the state, along with some federal money.
“Unduplicated” refers to foster children, homeless, English learners and those eligible for free and reduced lunch. The latter receive other benefits as well, such as waived charges for sports travel.
All told, RBUSD gets $4 million per year for unduplicated students.
Its current overall annual budget is $140 million.
The RBUSD student population is now at 9,400 students, compared to 5,900 for Manhattan Beach. Redondo Union operates two middle schools while MBUSD has one.
Class size for RBUSD is limited to 27 kids (per teacher) until third grade, with a required average of 24 students across grades K-3. From fourth grade through high school, the district maximum is 35 kids per class, per teacher.
Overall, Alpern cited four items as key to RBUSD finances; the property leases, good faith of its labor partners, the board not being over-committed – no long-term obligations for short-term funding – and the board being “appropriately conservative.”
Redondo Unified has 13.78% of its current annual budget in reserves, as of December. The state minimum for a district of its size is 3%.
“We are spending down our reserves, Our reserves aren’t growing,” Alpern said.
In a cost-saving measure Feb. 10, the school board approved the use of RBUSD’s early retirement incentive program for 27 staff members who will leave at the end of this school year.
“We’re solvent for sure, but we’re also cautious,” Alpern said. “We’re not looking at any kind of mass layoffs. We’re cautiously optimistic. But the early retirements, every one of those we are evaluating whether we are backfilling.”
The vast majority of California school districts’ funding is not tied to property tax. Wealthier communities get less funding for schools than poorer districts per student, which is fueled by supplemental grants for unduplicated kids.
Schools with a concentration of unduplicated (upwards of 50%) receive further state dollars.
Also, general increasing costs can be absorbed more easily in larger districts, Alpern suggested.
“Liability insurance, for example, when you have a smaller budget, it’s a bigger impact,” she said.
Not every school is under the Local Control Funding Formula, however, some districts go under “Basic Aid,” such as Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, for which schools are funded mainly by property tax.
Districts are eligible for “Basic Aid” if local property tax revenue exceeds what the district would get from the Local Control Funding Formula.
A total of 139 districts in California are funded this way – skewing toward the particularly wealthy or particularly small.
Alpern noted that she has never seen a significant wave of layoffs at Redondo Unified since she has worked for the district.
She just finished her annual “budget roadshow” visiting all staff in the winter months to give a budget status report.
RBUSD also gets about $1 million each year from the Redondo Beach Education Foundation.
A recent example of an RBUSD leased property was the former Patterson School on Pacific Coast Highway and Knob Hill Avenue. The district leased it to a private school for a time first, before leasing the site to The Kensington, an assisted living facility built in 2017.
A district may receive funds for unduplicated students in only one of the four categories, regardless if students qualify for more than one.
“Enrollment and attendance is still the most important piece,” said Nick Stephany, RBUSD assistant superintendent, human resources. “If students don’t show up, we don’t get funding that day.” ER
