Further Budget Cuts Ahead for School District

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District will receive at least $3.6 million in reduced funding from Sacramento for the 2011-12 school year, District CFO Jan Maez told the Board of Education at its meeting Thursday. This comes after Gov. Jerry Brown failed to convince enough state lawmakers to place extensions of sales, income and vehicle-license taxes on the June ballot.

Maez presented budget-cut scenarios to cover the reduction that she admitted were based on “an educated guess” of what could happen with state funding.

“There are numbers all over the place [in discussion of how much reduced funding there could be],” said Maez, who told the board that, in the best scenario, about $7.8 million would need to be cut from the SMMUSD budget over the next two years. In a worse scenario, the amount would nearly double.

There is some good news in the budget discussion Maez said it is likely the state will fund at least a portion of the mental-health costs that were . The service, which previously was fully funded by the state, was estimated to cost the SMMUSD about $1.25 million this school year. She said the state might fund about half the cost, but the word on that is not final.

The amount of state money going to the school district could go up next fall if voters approve a state tax proposal in November. This could be placed on the ballot without state legislature approval if enough petition signatures are collected from registered voters.

However, unlike a June election that would have been for tax extensions, this would be for new taxes. It could be a tougher sell to voters. Board of Education Vice President Ben Allen said the district should consider putting a local tax measure on the ballot that would only go into effect if a state measure failed.

Superintendent Candidate Chosen

District officials said last week that a final candidate has been selected to succeed Superintendent Tim Cuneo, who is retiring at the end of June. The candidate, whose name has not been released, will soon go through a background check and contract negotiation.

Kelly Pye’s New Role

Shari Davis, president of the SMMUSD’s PTA Council, announced at last week’s board meeting that former Board of Education member Kelly Pye was recently elected to succeed her for the 2011-12 school year. Pye served one term on the board, from 2006 to 2010. She chose not to run for re-election because she wanted to spend more time with her children. Pye will be formally introduced in her new role next at the May 10 PTA Council awards breakfast.