Over the next three years, PUSD will make cuts to the budget as a result of a California State Teachers’ Retirement System [CalSTRS] funding increase that began in 2014. This increase will cost $735,000 over the 2014-15 to 2016-17 school years, according to a PUSD budget update.
In order to bring CalSTRS to full funding, AB 1469, which was signed in 2014 by Governor Jerry Brown, increases rates of pension contributions over the next few years. As a result, the district has started deficit spending, and will make cuts to the PUSD program over the next three years.
“We can either get more money or spend less money, and it has been a combination of both of those things,” PUSD superintendent Randall Booker said. “We need to decrease our expenditures, and that is really hard when 90 percent of our budget is people. It’s not like we spend a lot on stuff. It can be hard.”
Currently the district is looking to cut spending while affecting the student experience as little as possible, Booker said. Avoided cuts can include teacher layoffs, which would lead to larger class sizes.
However, the district is first looking at items like contracts with outside groups, such as with companies that provide professional development to the schools.
“The number one thing across the district that I know is true is the most important and highest priority is to make sure that student programs — the opportunities that students have at our schools — are kept intact,” MHS principal Sati Shah said. “That’s always a number one and I do not see that changing in the future.”
The increased funding for CalSTRS is expected to fully fund the California teachers’ retirement system in about 31 years, according to a PUSD budget update. In the first year, this change costed PUSD over 300,000 dollars, Booker said.
“If the next three years grow steadily, or stay the same, I don’t think students will necessarily notice it in the first two years,” Booker said. “In the third year, it depends on the economy. It’s so hard for me to answer, because it is like looking in a crystal ball.”
California schools partially rely on capital gains taxes, Booker said. If the stock market performs well, the schools benefit from that, which is why Booker is uncertain of the magnitude of cuts in three years. Funding for PUSD also comes from variables such as Prop. 30, which will be on the CA ballot in Nov. of this year and the larger amount of local funding received from the community.
“One thing that is great about Millennium is that we run a really tight ship,” Shah said. “The things that we have at our school are the things that we need to have and I don’t see that changing in the future.”
At PHS, as well as other schools in the district, class sizes may increase over the next three years, although Booker wishes to prevent that. The size of classes impacts the classroom dynamic, learning experience, and teacher stress and workload, English teacher Jody Weverka said.
“The human contact that you have with people or the ability to say just say, ‘How are you doing?’, or even the space in class, it makes [a student] feel human and it makes the system feel humane,” Weverka said.
However, despite her opposition to larger class sizes, Weverka thinks it is very important to support teachers.
Despite the upcoming budget cuts, Booker thinks it is the best time for the Facilities Master Plan [FMP] to be passed and implemented.
The FMP, a Prop 39 bond, can only be voted on in even years. If the bond is not approved, PUSD will wait until 2020 to propose the FMP again as the parcel tax, up for vote in 2018, is too important, Booker said.
