Districts anticipate major hits to their 2022-23 budgets as enrollments drop
Despite this year’s return to in-person learning, districts throughout the state are seeing major declines in both enrollment and average daily attendance and fear the reductions could result in significant funding cuts next school year.
Without state intervention, many districts face substantial cuts in state funding and could be forced to make significant budget cuts in the 2022-23 school year due to a fall in enrollment and attendance to which funding is tied. Districts’ baseline funding depends on the number of students enrolled, minus the daily average number of absent students.
For the past two school years, districts were “held harmless” for the declines during the pandemic and were funded based on their enrollment and attendance figures for the pre-Covid 2019-20 school year. But that will no longer be the case unless the Legislature
extends the “hold harmless” rule or takes other action.
Statewide, enrollment in K-12 public schools in California fell by almost 3%, or 160,000 students, in 2020-21, according to annual data released in April by the California Department of Education. On Oct. 6, districts filed their “census day enrollment” figures, which is the enrollment figure used in the state funding formula. Those figures
likely won’t be made public until early next year.
West Contra Costa Unified, a district of about 26,000 students serving Richmond and surrounding areas, anticipates a loss of around $30 million in the 2022-23 school year barring no change in the funding formula, said Tony Wold, the district’s associate superintendent of business services.
Los Angeles Unified, San
Francisco Unified and others have also seen significant enrollment drops over the past two years.
For West Contra Costa, the reduction would mean a loss of about 10% of the district’s overall budget and could likely result in staff layoffs or force district officials to dip into reserve funds.
“Knowing that approximately 90% of most districts’ budget is spent on people, a 10% reduction would affect people,” Wold said.
The district has already endured years of budget hurdles. In early 2020, it projected a $48 million ongoing structural deficit for 2020-21 and cut about $30 million in ongoing expenditures from its 2020-21 budget in order to break even. The district did, however, receive record one-time state and federal funding this year, and was able to stave off cuts during the current school year thanks to a 5.5% cost-of-living adjustment from the state.