Call it a mathematics proposition: you shouldn’t count your chickens until they’re hatched.
With that in mind, city school superintendent Bruce Newlin said he does not know how much of the federal government’s latest stimulus money will trickle down to the Hermosa Beach City School District, with its 1,300 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
If state officials divide up the money based on the number of students per school, and pass it all along to the counties and thence to the school districts, the Hermosa district could receive $247,000. But Sacramento is groaning under its own critical budget woes, and educators are not certain how much money will make it to the schools, and how it might be divided between districts.
“There’s no way of really telling whether we would get any of it at all, or if we did, what amount we would get,” Newlin said. “That is still up in air. I’m not going to count those chickens.”
A $247,000 payday would give the school district more than three times the average teacher’s salary, which is about $72,000 a year.
Every year the Hermosa district is faced with potential teacher layoffs. Officials in the two-school district initially believed they would have to lay off a handful of teachers for the current school year, which began yesterday. But parents and other volunteers once again raised enough money to spare the positions.
However, repeated budget cuts from the state have forced the Hermosa district to increase average class sizes from 20 to 25 in the lower grades, for a second straight year.
For several years, the efforts of the volunteer fundraisers have covered about 10 percent of the school district’s operating budget. ER
