Uncertainty rampant in schools

The defeat of Tuesday's election package that could have restored education funding for California schools didn't seem to surprise local school district superintendents, but it does add some additional uncertainty in preparing budgets for next year.

Proposition 1B would have restored more than $9 billion for education in California, but would have taken effect only if 1A had passed. Both propositions were defeated. (<I>See </I><B>Election Results</B><I> at left</I>).

"Should it have passed, the only real result of that would be to maintain the level of funding that we ended up with in February," said Tim Azevedo, Anderson Union High School's superintendent.

"With this not passing, we honestly have no concrete, clear picture of what the state is going to do. I don't think the state has a clear picture of what they are going to do," Azevedo said during a school board meeting on Tuesday evening.

Azevedo and other local superintendents said they are left with a lot of questions about just how much the election defeat will affect their district budget for the 2009-2010 school year.

"We will know in the May revise comes out exactly what it means to us," said Bob Lowden, superintendent of Cottonwood Union Elementary School District.

But the state legislature's May budget revise isn't expected to come out until sometime in June.

"I am expecting it to neutralize any federal stimulus money that we get. Hopefully it won't get too far beyond that," Lowden said.

"But I don't have much confidence in the legislature right now," he said.

The superintendents said they are trying to keep the impact on students as minor as possible, but school district's all over the state are hurting from the budget cuts.

The Cottonwood, Anderson and Cascade school districts have already laid-off dozens of teachers, and the absence of funding the election would have restored makes it harder for the districts to bring them back.

"There will be fewer folks around, and the classes might be a little bit bigger," Lowden said. "We are trying to minimize the impacts on students as much as we can, but with cuts this large we really can't help it."