Manhattan Beach Unified School District presents First Interim Budget

By Michael Beeli

Staff Writer

Manhattan Beach Unified School District Assistant Superintendent Dawnalyn Murakawa-Leopard presented the MBUSD 2015-16 First Interim Budget at the Dec. 9 Board of Trustees meeting to review the district’s budgetary and financial status.

The report detailed the district’s revenue at a total of $70,950,876, with an increase of $2,751,641 aggregate funds. Of this revenue, $56,815,846 is unrestricted funding, while $14,135,030 is restricted. Within the total revenue, 71% comes from the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), 14% comes from local sources, 13% from other states, and 2% from the federal government.

“We have additional money from local sources like MBEF and our PTAs like Chevron that are coming in as local donations,” Murakawa-Leopard said. “In total that results in $2.7 million more than we thought had adopted, but our budget declined in unrestricted money. We gained more money, but that money is targeted to specific uses so we’re less flexible.”

The district’s expenditures total $72,730,556, which is $3,847,675 more than detailed by the last report. According to District Superintendent Dr. Michael Matthews the increase of $3,847,675 comes primarily from MBEF and PTA targeted donations, including supplies and new salaries for the district.

“When we need more employees that automatically adds to our benefits cost,” Board of Trustees President Bill Fournell said. “As we get more visibility it changes because of the ripple effect, as we expand one line of benefits it opens up more and that increases our costs.”

Under California Education Code Section 42310, public school districts must file at least two interim budgets reports annually to the local Superintendent and the California State Department of Education. The First Interim Budget Report covers the period from July 1, 2015 to October 31 2015.

“This is our first glimpse to see if our expenditures match what we actually had planned in July,” Murakawa-Leopard said. “We have some planning to do in order to be able to maintain the reserves we’ve had in the past as well as our fiscal solvency”

According to Murakawa-Leopard, national and state economies cause fluctuations in the state’s budget as they continue to recover and decline. California state law under Proposition 98 requires that as a state’s economy continues to grow, investment in education must increase relatively so that the state is always spending at least 40% of its revenue on education.

“The amount from last year has increased by the 1.2% cost of living adjustment and the augmentation grants give additional funding to provide career technical education and keep class sizes small,” Murakawa-Leopard said. “We’re optimistic that there will be slow growth for the next few years but we know that eventually it’ll stop because it’s a cyclical process”

State-funded education has relied on the LCFF since the 2013-14 school year. Murakawa-Leopard’s projection indicated that the district will be 92.5% funded under the LCFF throughout the 2015-16 school year.  However, the LCFF also predicted the numbers would be lower. Funding from the LCFF is dependent on high unduplicated counts attendance figures, which is aimed to target schools in lower-income areas.

“The unduplicated count is the number of students the district has who are english learners, foster youth, economically underprivileged, or in the free or reduced lunch program,” Murakawa-Leopard said. “In the entire state we are the 8th lowest unduplicated count.”

LCFF funding has also been reduced by a decline in student enrollment, which lowers revenue from augmentation grants-additional revenue granted by student enrollment in Kindergarten and 9th grade. The district projected enrollment of 6908 students; however, preliminary numbers indicated 100 students less than projected were actually enrolled, 48 9th graders less than the previous year. Based off of the LCFF these reductions in enrollment led to a decrease of revenue by $241,753. In order to preserve funding, MBUSD School Board President Bill Fournell discussed attendance plans for the next year.

“As we go into the spring and we’re changing to a new school calendar next fall, it’ll be really important we communicate this spring that we talk to parents about attendance and the importance of attendance,” Fournell said. “We need to stress that attendance during the Thanksgiving and formerly known as ski week periods are going to be critical.”