There’s good news and bad news in the 2011-12 Manteca Unified School budget approved by the Board of Trustees on Wednesday night.
First, the good news.
“We’re in good spirits that we’re not in deficit spending,” announced Senior Director of Business Services Jaqui Breitenbucher to the board before the vote.
The district is on a positive balance of $819,000 as it enters the new fiscal year on July 1, she added.
The bad news: the new budget is “a breathing, living document that will continually change. This budget we’re presenting you will change again,” said Breitenbucher, and that could mean cutbacks down the line which could be triggered by the state’s continuing effort to patch the state’s deficit. That plan is contingent on the state receiving $4 billion in new income as the economy recovers.
While it was still not clear how the state budget that was approved by the legislators and Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday will impact the district’s own spending plan for the new fiscal year, “rumors” that Proposition 98, the so-called Classroom Instructional Improvement and Accountability Act, would be underfunded is a big concern since that would mean further fiscal drain on the district’s new budget, Breitenbucher said.
The biggest slice in the district’s revenue pie comes from the state in the form of ADA or average daily attendance of students which amounts to $118,447,749 in the newly adopted budget, followed by federal funds totaling $11,257,910 with the rest coming from local revenue sources as well as grants.
New changes in the approved budget could also happen within the 45-day revision window when the board can direct any changes to the spending plan, Breitenbucher pointed out.
“This is just a projected budget,” she noted.
It was also prepared under the assumption that the district’s enrollment will grow in the next three years at a conservative pace of 198 ADA (average daily attendance). The 198 figure was based on enrollment numbers in the last three years.
The mortgage meltdown resulting in the massive home foreclosures dramatically affected the district’s enrollment; however, on the positive side, there has been a steady increase in enrollment in the last two years, Breitenbucher said.
Projected revenues in the newly adopted school district budget totals $160,296,742 while the expenditure figures total $159,477,742 which gives the district a positive cash balance of $819,000 going into the new fiscal year.
Eighty-four percent, or 84 cents out of every dollar in the new budget is allocated for district staff salaries (64 percent) and fringe benefits (20 percent).
