Bonsall Unified meets in special meeting on budget talks

The Bonsall Unified School District Governing Board met Wednesday, Dec. 9 to address some budget issues regarding the current school year.

The board first approved the district's First Interim Report for the fiscal year 2020-21.

Laura Castro, executive director of Business and Administrative Services for the district gave the presentation.

She reported that the district's general fund revenue projected is $28,820,800, which includes the one-time COVID-19 funding. She said expenditures will total $28,495,203, according to projections. Salaries represent 54% of the total expenditures.

Castro said the district will end the school year with roughly $7,000 more in fund balance.

"Which looks great in numbers, but that amount can run out quickly," she said. "Especially when we're right now funding with ADA, but once it hits the actual ADA enrollment, we will see how we are going to be affected in the numbers."

The report was approved unanimously.

The board also approved the Budget Overview for Parents.

"What this item is providing is additional information to parents regarding how the CARES (Act) money or the learning loss mitigation funds are being spent," an unidentified staff member said. "I just want to point out two items that are in the LCAP. A great deal of that money is going to be spent on the after-school learning loss tutoring that we're putting together at this time and that will begin when we come back in January. We're developing that right now and then also a four to six-week learning loss summer program to address the needs of our high needs students. Those are big expenditures that are coming out of that money."

Board member Michael Gaddis asked staff to explain the learning loss tutor plan.

"Right now we're working with the principals and we're having the teachers identify what we are calling our tier 2 and tier 3 intervention students," he said. "They would be the students who are slightly behind; I'm just going to put it in layman's terms; tier 3 are the students who are extensively behind in terms of their academics...motivation is a factor that we're taking into consideration for those students that we have identified. We are working with Dr. Staine right now to identify and recruit teachers to do the after-school tutoring that'll be starting in January and then tier 2 students and tier 3 students will be invited to participate in that. That will be much the same for summer as well so it won't be open to everybody. Tier 1 students who are at grade level would not need the intervention. Those students will not be invited to take part in this."

Staff said that the tutoring sessions would be in-person and virtually.

Gaddis asked how many students were in tier 2 and tier 3.

Staff answered that there were about 300 students in tier 2 and a little more than 100 in tier 3.

"What we know doesn't work in education is providing more of the same and in terms of intervention and we're not saying that we're going to offer you an additional hour of instruction or additional two hours of instruction," he said. "What we're doing is targeting the areas of need. We're having the administrators work with the teachers to target the needs of the students. Is it reading? Is it foundational math skills? Whatever it is, we're going to target so that we can group the students according to the area that they're struggling in."

The board approved the budget unanimously.

Jeff Pack can be reached by email at [email protected].