Sacramento: District Asks Schools to Trim Budgets by 10% Amid $174.5 Million Funding Gap
The Sacramento City Unified School District in Sacramento County, California, on October 20 asked its principals to trim their school-site budgets by 10% this school year, with plans due by Wednesday. According to EdSource, citing The Sacramento Bee, the reductions are limited to non-personnel spending such as supplies and outside contracts and cannot come from salaries.
Chief Business Officer Gerardo Castillo said the district set a $2 million target for cuts to what it calls school-site non-personnel spending. The district, in the state capital, is trying to close a $174.5 million funding gap; district leaders announced last Thursday that they had reduced the gap by $49.8 million so far. The district is also launching a student attendance campaign aimed at increasing revenue by $2.5 million through average-daily-attendance funding.
Michael Fine, chief executive officer of the state Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), has warned that if the district cannot pay its bills it will have to request help from the state Legislature by early January, as it takes about 90 days for lawmakers to pass a funding bill. If the district takes an emergency state loan, its school board would be stripped of decision-making authority and reduced to an advisory role, and the superintendent is often fired immediately. (GSM, based on EdSource reporting)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 / T71024
