Petaluma City Schools to Lose $560K This Year

stands to lose $560,000 starting January, as a result of state budget cuts announced this week by Gov. Jerry Brown.

The state is dealing with a $2.2 billion revenue shortfall and this Tuesday, Gov. Brown announced cuts totaling $1 billion, including $248 million to school transportation.

Transportation funding is used to bus in students from all over the district to PCS’s junior and high schools. But since half of the district’s transportation funding already comes out of the general fund, the latest announcement is a direct hit on the overall budget, impacting the number of dollars spent per student and, potentially, the number of days schools are open each year.

“It’s less than the worst case scenario, but these are cuts on top what we’ve already had,” said Steve Bolman, superintendent of Petaluma City Schools, which has about 8,000 students.

The district is already receiving 18 percent less than what is allocated to it by the California Department of Education, as part of across the board cuts to all schools in the state.

The latest announcement means that PCS will now have to dip into a quickly dwindling reserve fund that has decreased from over $8 million last fall to less than $5 million today.

The district has tried to adjust to cuts by reducing the number of teacher and staff days in order to build up reserves. But reducing the number of teaching days in 2012-13 may be unavoidable, Bolman said.

Students attending the city’s largest school district are already down to just 177 instructional days a year, compared to the recommended 188. However, other industrialized countries offer at least 200 days of instruction, according to Bolman.

“This is just more cuts to a woefully underfunded system,” Bolman said, adding that California lags behind on per-pupil spending and classroom size of just about every state in the country. “Every other service the state funds exceeds the national average except for K-12 education.”

What's your take on the cuts? Should the state allocate more money to education than it does now? What should it reduce funding for?