Sigh of Relief for School Board as Foundation Helps Fill Budget Gap

Erika White, president of the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation stood at the podium at Wednesday's school board meeting and delivered some long-awaited good news. The full $4.1 million of the organization's donations will be granted to the school district. A total of 57 employees, announced White, will be spared receiving pink slips this year.

The whole room stood to applaud.

With audience members smiling and board members looking slightly less careworn, the atmosphere had decidedly shifted from the tension-defining budget meetings in previous weeks.

"The last time we sat here we were looking at having to make cuts of $6.4 million," said School Board President Ida VanderPoorte. "A lot has happened during that time, one of them being—and we've applauded them already but we can applaud them again and again and again—the Ed Foundation."

The money has been assigned according to the preferences of parent donors, with $2 million allocated to saving 27 teaching positions. Included in the proposed grant is $47,100 for the Mira Costa High School science lab assistant, whom a student in last week's board meeting had pleaded for the district to keep. In addition, the Education Foundation will be funding two science specialists, three reading specialists, three counselors and five librarians. A music grant of $300,000 has also been assigned, to include four full-time positions.

In addition to the Education Foundation's $4.1 million, Manhattan Beach PTAs also scraped together $355,000, bringing the district's budget shortfall down by a total of $4.5 million.

But the district's problems are far from over. Cuts still need to be made to the tune of $1.5 million, meaning 31 full-time positions will be eliminated.

"It's still not easy," said board member Ellen Rosenberg. "But it's something that we have to do and we have to do it conservatively and prudently because of uncertainty in the future."

The state's budget is even more tentative than initially assumed; board members returned from a trip to Sacramento this week without any clear indication of what California's fiscal future will look like. All they know, said VanderPoorte, is that the governor's current budget proposal will not pass the legislature in the summer.

"He has made a cut to education of about $2 billion, but he has cut all human services basically," said VanderPoorte. "We should probably expect that there will be additional cuts."

Declining enrollment is also becoming a major concern for the district. In the past week, the district received a letter from the LAUSD stating that students would no longer be released to the Manhattan Beach Unified School District.

"They want to keep them for themselves," explained a teacher from Pacific Elementary School.

"Every 100 students that we don't get it's $552,000," said VanderPoorte. "We always got a huge influx into ninth grade, and that won't be happening. So, our enrollment numbers we're a little uncertain about."

For now, a major crisis has been averted. But the revenue system in the district is fundamentally flawed, VanderPoorte reminded the board. "Our expenses are exceeding our revenue by $2.5 million," she said.

The effect of tight financial times will be ongoing for the school district even after the economy has recovered, agreed Rosenberg.

"We're not out of the woods," said Board Vice President Amy Howorth. "We should be conservative now to allow ourselves the most flexibility in the future."