Diana Lambert, reporter from the Sacramento Bee, requested information related to why the Natomas Unified School District had to make such huge cuts compared to other districts of similar size. Following is John Christ’s (Assistant Superintendent of Business Services) response to Diana Lambert for your information:
Hi Diana,
You asked why does Natomas Unified have to make such huge cuts compared to other district? The answer is can be very complex because we do not know if we are comparing apples to apples.
There are many assumptions and variables that go into what a school district may include in a list. First of all, what period of time did their list cover? Natomas’ is a list of adjustments developed and approved over the course of the entire 2008-09 year. Were other district reporting the adjustments they made through the whole year or just the adjustments they needed for the immediate impact of the May Revise?
What have the other district’s included on their lists? Natomas Unified has included a whole range of adjustments, not just budget cuts. Other districts may not have grouped their adjustments through the year in the same way that Natomas did. For example, looking at the attached list that is also in the 2009-10 Adopted Budget on the District’s web site, the first item listed is reducing or eliminating the 2008-09 Beginning Balance ($7,967,027). This is undoubtedly going to happen as the District spends down its reserve, but did or would other districts consider this appropriate to put on their lists? Natomas Unified recognized $5,281,790 in one-time Federal Stimulus revenues as part of adjustments needed to balance the budget. Would other districts put revenue adjustments on their list of budget cuts? Would other districts categorize their adjustments in the same way Natomas Unified did? Natomas Unified has the good fortune of being a growing school district, and thus has to plan for increased staffing in future years based on projected enrollment growth. Natomas has reduced projected staffing increases for 2009-10 and 2010-11 by $473,011. Did other district adjust future staffing projections, and did they consider those as cuts to put on their list? No district is right or wrong in what they include on their lists. There is no uniform prescribed requirement or format. It is mostly a matter of how their Board wants to consider adjustments and what they want to see on any given list.
We may have more cuts now, because Natomas Unified held off in doing program cuts and layoffs as long as it could until it was absolutely necessary and clear what the legislature would and wouldn’t prioritize and allow. The District remained optimistic that a Legislature that claims education is its number one priority would not make $6 billion in additional cuts to schools. Other district’s may have started making cuts a lot earlier than Natomas did. Other districts started laying off staff in 2007-08 in preparation for the 2008-09 school year, and most gave layoff notices in March 2009 for the 2009-10 year. For the reasons given above, Natomas Unified has postponed giving layoff notices until it became absolutely necessary this Summer. The projected savings of these layoffs are included in the Natomas list. Other districts may or may not have included their earlier layoffs on their recent cut list.
I finished the survey last night that the Sacramento Bee has asked all school districts to submit on July 24th. I want to point a few things out to you as you look at our numbers. In the survey you ask for the number of employees by category for December 2008, and projected for 2009-10. I gave you the number of employees Natomas had on payroll on December, and not the number of positions. This is a factor when you look at the classified employees numbers. I reported the District had 418 on payroll on December 2008, and is projected to have 417 in 2009-10. This does not reflect the 15 layoffs, because the District filled 14 vacancies since December, showing a net reduction of one. For your information, a number of these vacancies were in Food Services.
When you look at middle and high school student to teacher ratios you will find little or no change, and in fact, you will find that the ratio is going down in middle schools. The reason that there is little change is because the District is already staffed to the maximum class size cap in the teachers’ contract at these grade levels. The reason the middle school ratio is going down is because the District staffed over the cap in 2008-09.
The Total Budget amount I posted in the survey of $76,206,471 is not the amount you will find in the 2009-10 Adopted Budget. The total General Fund budgeted expenditures reported in the 2009-10 Adopted Budget is $83,341,353. As was reported in the Budget there were $7,134,882 in “additional adjustments” that were approved too late to get into the official State Budget forms. This is all explained on pages 3 through 14 in the 2009-10 Adopted Budget on the District’s web site. The Sacramento County Office of Education understands fully what we did and why. It was a timing issue.
You will see that when you look at projected spending per student that it goes down from $8,132.18 in 2008-09 to $7,003.03 in 2009-10, which is to be expected with all the budget adjustments. What you might not expect is to see it go up in 2010-11 to $7,274.51. The reason for this is because a lot of the adjustments in 2009-10, particularly the Federal Stimulus funding are one-time and will not repeat in 2010-11.
You really need to refer to the attached list for the survey question “Other Program Cuts 2009-10.” There was no way I could include all these adjustments in your little survey box.
It is never simple to explain comparisons of one school district to another, but I hope this is of some help.
John Christ
Assistant Superintendent, Business Services
(916) 567-5457
Dolly McClellan
Executive Assistant to the Superintendent
Natomas Unified School District
916.567.5401
dmcclellan@natomas.k12.ca.us
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