Balanced Programs for a High Performing District

By David Cohen

While our district continues to excel academically, we have been forced to cut 20% of our budget. Since 90% of our budget goes to employee salaries and benefits, some programmatic changes were necessary. My goal has been to balance those changes so that our district still offers a balanced education for our children.

At the same time as all of this progress has been made, the district has been forced to cut 20% of its budget. 90% of the district's budget goes to salaries and benefits for employees, as it should, and as a result, budget cuts necessitate reducing the district workforce.

The 2010-2011 budget approved by the Board of Trustees resulted in a reduction of more than 30 teachers and the equivalent of 12 classified staff. The dollar savings in the budget came from 6.8% savings in teaching salaries and 6.5% savings in classified salaries.

My goal has been to maintain balance in our district. I have fought to keep our district libraries open, our top-notch elementary music program intact, our middle school counseling available, and our class sizes at a reasonable level. In all of these areas, we have had to sacrifice a bit, but I am very proud that all of these services will still be available to our children next year. In order to make this work, some other district services were forced to endure some reductions, including school clerks, business office staff, and reading tutors.

I am confident that our excellent employees will continue to find ways to provide superior service to our students even as they sacrifice for our district budget. That said, schools cannot continually be expected to cut services in a way that is transparent to students, parents, and the community. In my second term on the Board, I will continue to work with our elected officials in Sacramento to fight for adequate funding so that we can bring back services that have been cut and stop sacrificing our children and our employees.