Teacher layoffs still loom within Manhattan Beach Unified after Governor’s budget is released
by Mark McDermott
Governor Gavin Newsom released his proposed budget in January, and though he is attempting to spare public education from significant cuts, the Manhattan Beach Unified School District’s budget outlook did not significantly improve. The district still faces the prospect of laying off as many as 70 teachers in the next two years and seeing average class sizes increase from between 30 and 31 students per teacher to 35 and 36.
The MBUSD Board of Education received an update from Deputy Superintendent Dawnalyn Murakawa-Leopard at its January 24 meeting. Her message was that the Governor’s budget at least prevented a more dire scenario from occurring, which given the state’s drastic decline in revenues was — and still is, depending on the legislative outcome of the budgetary process — entirely possible.
“Although it’s tough, it could be worse,” Murakawa Leopard said. “If we were outside education, we would probably be experiencing much more difficult circumstances. Many of our colleagues in other areas of the state budget are struggling.”
A key variant that will determine how many teachers will be laid off is whether or not local voters approve an extension of the existing $225 parcel tax, which was initially approved in 2018 and generates $2.5 million per year. The parcel tax, known as Measure MB, expires this year. An extension of the parcel tax is on the March 5 ballot. Because election certification could take until early April and the state deadline for issuing pink slips to school employees is March 15, the board will need to approve layoffs at its February 28 meeting.
Murakawa-Leopard cautioned the board that even the passage of the parcel tax would not solve the district’s shortfall. It would reduce what is projected to be an $11.2 million deficit over the next two years to about $6.4 million. In either scenario, with or without the passage of the parcel tax, the district will have to utilize all its reserves except for the 3 percent mandated by state law. MBUSD’s operating deficit would be $9.1 million the next fiscal year and $8.7 million the following year without the parcel tax extension, or, respectively, $6.7 million and $6.3 million.
“I do want to be clear that the parcel tax will certainly reduce the amount of budget adjustments that we have to make, but it will not fully solve the problem, due to just reduced expectations for our state revenue,” Murakawa-Leopard said. “And as you know, we have to deal with the reality that’s in front of us now, which does not include our parcel tax. We can’t include that until it’s approved by voters, so $11.2 million [in budget deficit] is what we have to deal with as of now….It’s a pretty challenging picture for us.”
Another looming factor in MBUSD’s budget projections is enrollment decline. Like most school districts, MBUSD saw a large drop during the pandemic, and despite slight upticks over the past two years, current enrollment is at 6,000 students. Enrollment in the year before the pandemic was 6,521. The impact of this on Average Daily Attendance, the primary driver of overall state funding, will be felt in coming years’ budgets.
“For this year, we were able to use a three year average that includes our pre-pandemic attendance numbers,” Murakawa-Leopard said. “Next year, we will be [based] solely on the next years’ enrollment. So that is part of it.”
Governor Newsom is straining to keep budget cuts from schools. The state is facing an unusual budget predicament in that, due to flooding a year ago, the federal and state tax deadline was extended until October. Thus an unexpectedly drastic decline in revenues — one that the Legislative Analyst’s Office [LAO] likened to the bursting of the dot.com bubble in the late 90s and the Great Recession a decade later — led to a $37 billion deficit that was not apparent until November. Newsom’s budget includes some unprecedented math, including a retroactive lowering of the state’s education funding “baseline,” the minimum annual education funding required under Proposition 98. The lower baseline is in keeping with lowered state revenues but begins with the 2022-23 budget that was already adopted with different assumptions last June, so it is unclear if this approach will pass legislative muster. In any case, either with a lower baseline or bigger outright cuts, the result is reduced educational funding going forward, although not as drastically as many educational leaders feared. As one education lobbyist told the LA Times, “This certainly takes the cake on being the best bad-year budget.”
Murakawa-Leopard warned the board the state budget process remains fraught with uncertainties that could impact MBUSD funding.
“We just don’t know what is going to happen,” she said.
Regardless, the board will need to make major budget decisions before the state settles on a budget. Trustee Jen Fenton noted that reductions in past years have already left the district’s classified staffing threadbare, meaning that it’s likely the majority of cuts will need to come from certificated employees, MBUSD’s roughly 400 teachers.
“I think it’s important to note that we’ve tried to keep reductions away from the classroom as much as possible,” Fenton said. “And this is not a decision that we’re coming to lightly. This is not something that we’ve just decided to cut arbitrarily. But we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
The projected staffing reductions include 32 full time positions (called FTEs) in the coming year and 31 the following year. In addition, 10 FTEs that were based on pandemic-related one-time funding sources will be reduced.
“I think that it also needs to be understood that when we’re looking at FTEs, it could be teachers, it can also be support staff,” Fenton said. “So the impact of one reduction, two reductions, 40 reductions…will be felt widespread.”