Kentfield schools face tough decisions

It is a rarity that any public meeting in Marin draws a crowd as large as the one that recently turned out for the Kentfield School District trustees meeting.

The board’s Feb. 11 meeting drew an estimated 250 people. Parents, staff and teachers packed the Kent Middle School multi-purpose room to share their opinions about proposed budget cuts, layoffs and reduction in staff’s work hours.

They got their say.

But it is the school board that has to do the hard work, making decisions that balance the district’s budget. They are not only responsible for providing local youth with the best possible public education, but they are the shepherds of taxpayers’ dollars that are supposed to be spent wisely toward fulfilling that same goal.

Sometimes, the two objectives clash.

In Kentfield’s case, it is sort of a head scratcher as the district has historically had one of the highest local school taxes in the state.

But the school board is still faced with the task of cutting just over $1 million from its annual budget.

The prospect of cuts should not come as a surprise as trustees warned they were coming. The budget the board adopted in May 2019 exceeded the district’s revenue. On top of that, the board approved a 4.5%, two-year raise for district teachers, adding an estimated $600,000 to that gap.

Some of the cuts reflect a decline in the small district’s enrollment. But the need to close that projected budget gap remains a current and ongoing reality for the district.

While parents, staff and teachers have rallied to keep cuts as far away from classroom programs as possible — and that has been a goal of the board, as well — attaining that may be difficult.

The board members have a responsibility, as taxpayers’ elected representatives, to wisely manage the district’s budget. Shrugging off a $1 million budget deficit and the real possibility that gap will continue to grow is not fiscally responsible.

The proposed cuts slice across the board, from administration to classrooms to campus staff. These are difficult decisions.

It’s easier for the public to urge the school board to cut somewhere else, often away from their kids’ classrooms and programs. But in some cases, “somewhere else” has its advocates, as well.

The most constructive advice during budget hearings is for the public to propose specific alternatives.

Given the hours of public hearings and committee meetings already devoted to this challenge, the heavy lifting is now up to the trustees.

There is justified frustration that a district with one of the state’s highest parcel taxes — $1,600 per year with an annual 3% automatic inflator — is so quickly facing such deep cutbacks. Backers of that 2018 tax measure, stressed at the time that the increase was not needed to cover the district’s rising pension costs for teachers and staff.

But like other districts across the state, Kentfield now finds itself facing state-required increases in its share of those pensions. When combined with recent raises, the district is looking at a pension cost heading toward 20% of the teachers’ payroll. In 2014, that figure was a manageable 8%.

If school leaders are setting the stage for another tax increase, they should carefully consider the narrow margin of victory they achieved in 2018 — and the defeat of the tax measure that preceded that.

District trustees face some difficult decisions to balance this year’s budget and those in the near future. They have made some decisions in recent months that are now fiscal challenges that must be answered.

It is essentially a multi-million dollar housekeeping task for a very large family — a community.

The importance of their decisions and the need to be open and frank in detailing their actions are underscored by the turnout at its Feb. 11 meeting.