By Kate Robak
Calendar Editor
Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Trustees presented its updated version of the budget for this school year on Oct. 3 and prepared for other updates that will be made this year.
Each year, school districts are required to have their budgets ready for the current year and following two years. There can be revisions to the future budget based on the current budget. By December, California mandates that school districts revise the budget for the current year.
“The primary reason we want to revise the budget now is because we want our budget picture to be as accurate a ‘snapshot in time’ as possible given the uncertainty of what’s potentially coming in November,” Deputy Superintendent of Administrative Services Rick Bagley said. “I felt we should take the time to revise the budget because of Props 30 and 38.”
The revisions that they are still concerned about are the possible mid-year budget cuts that depend on the outcomes of Propositions 30 and 38.
If passed, Proposition 38 would increase income tax for every person making $7,316 or more annually, thus increasing the funding for California schools. Proposition 30, sponsored by Governor Jerry Brown, would increase sales tax and income tax of people earning $250,000 or more annually. These propositions were written to compensate for decreased education funding to schools throughout California. If this proposition fails, budget cuts will be made to California school funding and the loss of about $3 million to the MBUSD yearly budget.
“The Board has decided to encourage the community to be as informed as possible on Props 30 and 38,” MBUSD Board President Ellen Rosenberg said. “We really want to be sure that people vote on these propositions in the election on Nov. 6.”
The primary revision in the 2012-13 budget was the change in the expected deficit that was made in the budget last year. It was expected that the budget would be exceeded by $3 million. Instead, it was only surpassed by $1 million.
“The good news is we didn’t deficit spend as much as we thought we were going to,” Bagley said. “The bad news is that we still deficit spent in 2011-12 by over $1 million.”
Due to the decreased cost of special education programs, California’s state budget was lower than expected.
The reimbursement of special needs services from the state was also a contributing factor to the less severe deficit of the state.
“This makes our budget more current and accurate to today’s numbers,” said Bagley. “We need to be in this position to be prepared for what is going to happen in November.”
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