Budgets for employees and classroom supplies may be trimmed starting in June as the Tracy Unified School District faces a 5 to 6 percent overall budget cut in the 2008-09 fiscal year, one of the largest in the district’s history.
Superintendent Jim Franco told district staff last week that TUSD must cut between $6.3 million and $7.5 million from its $126 million operating budget.
Casey Goodall, assistant superintendent for business services, said that turns out to be a significant chunk of money, considering that 88 percent of the district’s budget goes to salaries and is already spoken for. Most of the rest goes to books and supplies, as well as services and other operating expenses.
"It’s really 50 percent of the (remaining) money that we have flexibility with," Goodall said.
That flexibility is all but gone after previous budget cutbacks. Last year, the district chopped 26 percent out of its budget for books and supplies even as it saw a slight increase in revenue. That followed budget cuts in 2003-04, when the district slashed $3.6 million, and in 2004-05, when it cut $650,000.
In the 2003-04 fiscal year, the district laid off several maintenance workers, high school clerks and workers in the personnel, purchasing and finance departments. The district also cut funding for the D.A.R.E., Safe and Sober Grad and science camp programs.
"The things that were easy (to cut) we got rid of, and we’re down to hardcore issues," Goodall said.
No specific cutbacks have been proposed yet. The district plans to create a committee to brainstorm budget cuts next week.
That committee, Goodall said, will probably find that previously rigid budget items will have to be flexible this year. There will likely be no new hires or salary increases.
"We’re not exactly freezing positions, but we’re being very careful about what we fill," he said. "It’s a dramatic slowdown."
The district will stay in its set student-to-teacher ratio of 32 students per classroom for kindergarten- through eighth-grade classes and 35 students per classroom for high school.
"Any cuts that need to be made, need to be made as far away from the students as possible," said Tracy Educators Association president Steve Sievers, who hopes to avoid cuts that lessen teachers’ supplies or directly touch students.
A tightened budget worries Cecile Henderson, who was hired in October to teach music at Jacobson, McKinley and Hirsch elementary schools.
"Any other district I’ve been in, as soon as they say budget cuts, the first thing to go is always the music program," she said. "I think people don’t understand the value that music adds to life."
Administrators threatened to wipe out Henderson’s job when she taught music at Antioch Unified School District in 2004, two days after she was nominated as the district’s teacher of the year.
"Education seems to be the only place where job performance has nothing to do with your job stability," she said. "It should be predicated on how well you do your job."
Goodall figures the upside of the state’s cuts could be that painful state cuts this year may make future budgets easier to balance.
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