Cascade passes budget

Trustees of the Cascade Union Elementary School District passed the 2009-2010 budget with only a $32,343 spending deficit Tuesday, June 23, after making several more cuts necessitated by a $715,000 deficit that developed in May.

However, the bottom is still falling. Deficit spending is expected to increase to $715,472 in 2010-2011 and up to $918,882 in 2011-2012.

As such, the district's reserves are not expected to last much more than three years, according to Donell Evans, the district's chief business officer. During the next three school years, the reserve would fall from 13.27 percent this year to 10.08 percent in 2010-2011 and then to 2.92 percent in 2011-2012, Evans said.

"We are living on reserves until reductions can be made," she commented.

Amid falling reserves, the district is also suffering declining enrollment and expects more state budget cuts in the coming school year.

"They're talking about huge mid-year cuts in 2009-2010," Superintendent Dr. Wes Smith said.

He added that the Cascade district is not alone in the perfect storm of declining enrollment and state budget cuts. The Cascade district declined by 35 students from this time last year.

"Sixty percent of school districts (in California) are in decline," Smith added.

About $375,000 in federal stimulus funds have aided the district, but it was "not half of what they've taken away," Smith said.

The purpose of the federal funds was not to save school districts, however.

"It's just to helping us until the economy recovers, that's all it was meant to do," Smith said.

The district expects a second round of federal stimulus funding, but "we don't know when, how much, or with what strings attached," Evans said.

After making several cuts to staffing and transportation in the spring, the district may get creative to find more fat to trim.

"We've cut as much as we can into the classrooms," board member Ann Cannan said.

"We really are getting down to bare bones," Evans said, which has forced the district to look at "uncomfortable reductions that thus far we haven't had to do. We're trying to target reductions as far away from the classroom as possible."

Evans first mentioned the possibility of shared transportation services with Anderson High School District (AUHSD) and Pacheco Union Elementary School District. For transportation, she indicated the districts could share bus routes, putting all youth on the same bus route on one school bus. The possibility of a partnership between the City of Anderson and the school system to form a distinct transportation line had stalled, she said.

She said that the district was also exploring combining technology services with Cottonwood Union School District and AUHSD. Combining technology resources could consolidate computer technology services and software licensing.

Evans also said that the school libraries may be staffed by librarians on a rotational basis, keeping the libraries open to teachers and students, but without a paid librarian always on hand.