FUHSD budget up in the air due to state budget uncertainty

The Fallbrook Union High School District board of trustees is expected to vote on the new fiscal year’s budget, June 22, but at the moment, it’s not entirely clear what that budget will look like.

Brenda Mefford, chief business officer of FUHSD, presented a proposed budget to the board June 8. And while that proposed budget is typically the one that would be adopted at the meeting after being presented to the board, the coronavirus has created much uncertainty around how much funding local schools will get.

“There’s going to be probably very large changes between what I’m presenting now and what I’ll be asking you to adopt on the 22nd of June,” Mefford told the board June 8.

In the initial budget proposal Mefford presented for the 2020-2021 fiscal year, she projected total revenue of about $27.3 million and total expenditures of about $28.9 million, leaving a $1.6 million deficit expected to cut into the district’s approximately $5.1 million in reserves.

Her projections for coming years were even worse, with a $3 million shortfall predicted for 2022-2023.

But that budget is based on state spending cuts Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed in his May revision budget, cuts that now may not come to fruition.

School districts in California get most of their funding from the state, through something called the Local Control Funding Formula. The state gives each district the same level of base funding per student, depending on grade level, and it can grant more depending on levels of high-need populations like low-income students, students in foster care and English learners.

That formula mostly leaves school budgets at the mercy of the state – which, right now, is facing plummeting tax revenue due to an economy that has been stalled by pandemic-related job losses. The state also was put in a tricky position when the income tax filing deadline was pushed back to July. Since the state gets more than half of its revenue from income taxes, the delay in tax filings means the state won’t know how much revenue it will receive for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1, until it is already in the next fiscal year.

In his May revision, Newsom estimated the state will see a decline in revenue of around 22%, and proposed cutting the Local Control Funding Formula by 10%.

Categoricals – funds earmarked for specific purposes like special education or schools with certain programs – would be cut by as much as 50%, and the state will defer as much as $5.3 billion in education spending, the governor said.

But lawmakers have indicated they don’t entirely support these cuts.

CalMatters reported that while Newsom proposed cutting $14 billion from schools, health care and safety net programs unless the federal government sends funds by July 1, the a proposal from the state Legislature assumes federal funding will arrive, and in the case that it doesn’t come by Oct. 1, limits cuts to $7 billion by drawing on reserves.

So, while nothing is set in stone, it’s quite likely the budget Mefford presented to the board won’t resemble the one the board actually approves at its next meeting.

“When I come to the board on June 22 these numbers, I’m very confident, will be much better than the way they look now, but this is what I had to go with at the May revise,” Mefford said. “So, sorry I had to give such bad news only to say, ‘just kidding it’s not going to look like that.’”

Will Fritz can be reached by email at [email protected].