Budget shortfall forces board to cut positions, restructure

Palo Alto Unified School District board members have unanimously approved a 2017-18 budget that includes $4.4 million worth of cuts resulting in the elimination, consolidation or reassignment of dozens of employee positions and programs.

The reductions will cut district-wide, involving everyone from technology managers to clerical staff to a principal on special assignment to parent volunteer coordinators. Money for student field trips will be trimmed back too.

The cuts stemmed from a $3.8 million budget shortfall attributed to a miscalculation of property tax revenue growth. The district last July projected the revenue would increase 8.67 percent but it rose only 5.34 percent. This time, staff is projecting a 3.73 percent growth in property tax revenue for the 2017-18 fiscal year, which begins July 1.

Chief Budget Officer Cathy Mak told the board earlier this year to expect a cumulative budget shortfall of $8.8 million in the next four years.

The new budget is based on operating revenue of about $227.9 million and expenses totaling around $228.7 million.

School board members held out hope that some positions and programs could be restored if property taxes exceed expectations or the state sends more money the district’s way later this summer.

Gov. Jerry Brown so far has proposed disbursing more than $1 billion in onetime discretionary funds to school districts, including $1.7 million to Palo Alto, Mak said.

Gunn High School teachers and other staff members were pleasantly surprised Tuesday to hear Superintendent Max McGee say he intends to restore the equivalent of 3.25 full-time classified positions that were eliminated earlier this month, if the district receives the state funds.

Teachers, parents and students protested the cuts, which they said would lead to closure of Gunn’s world language lab and longer waits for schedule, attendance and transcript records.

McGee said he knows Gunn will need some of these classified positions “or someone to do the work, to put it that way, before school even starts.”

McGee said he thought about restoring the positions by taking about $225,000 from $750,000 the district set aside to hire six teachers at middle and high schools to reduce class sizes.

The district already planned to leave three of those teaching positions unfilled because enrollment at the middle schools is expected to decline.

Earlier in the meeting, speakers including Marc Igler, a Gunn teacher and vice president of the Palo Alto Educators Association, asked McGee and board members to find a way to save the positions.

The district would get a better “bang for the buck” if it restores the “behindthe-scenes jobs” at Gunn instead of hiring teachers to reduce class sizes, Igler said.

He said hiring three teachers at the high schools might only reduce class sizes from 32 to 31 students, which would “have very little, if any, effect on the educational experience of students.”

Earlier this month, Gunn parent Linda Fresco described the cut as a “grave, short-sighted mistake that will have long-term negative impact on how our school functions.”

“The loss of the high school volunteer coordinators will dissolve the volunteerism of the many hundreds of parents who give their time to Gunn and Paly,” Fresco said. “Without a position dedicated to soliciting and organizing volunteers, this good-will free labor just won’t happen. This will cause immeasurable harm to the spirit and culture of our high schools.”

Board member Jennifer DiBrienza said she wants the district to do everything possible to backfill positions — but not just at Gunn.

“You all did a very compelling job of explaining to us the impact on your school,” DiBrienza told Gunn supporters, who attended the meeting wearing red T-shirts that read, “We’re all in this together.”

Board member Ken Dauber said the district’s reserves fund is not “the right place to look” for relief because the positions are not one-time expenses nor are they meant to address an increase in student population.

Dauber said the cuts are a result of the district doing a bad job of budgeting, adopting staff contracts it couldn’t afford and making a mistake in forecasting revenue.

The district has about $50 million in reserves. Of that, $4.5 million was set aside in 2015 for McGee’s proposal to build a new campus for pre-kindergarten to high school students. Plans are on hold because enrollment projections have fluctuated.

Board member Todd Collins said the district must address the “astounding figure” spent on legal bills.

The district likely will be spending more than $1 million in the upcoming school year on contracts for legal services because of an increase in public information requests, Office for Civil Rights cases, Title IX investigations, personnel matters and more.

“That’s the equivalent of eight teachers,” Collins said. “I’d love to see that number go down.”