LAUSD's Plan To Avoid Financial Meltdown For The Next Three Years
Los Angeles Unified School Board members will meet Tuesday to take public comments on their proposed $9.2 billion budget for the upcoming school year. One week later, board members expect to take a final vote on the spending plan.
Even if the budget is balanced for now, officials warn that LAUSD's long-term financial health is becoming more precarious. This warning has become almost an annual routine in LAUSD, and in recent years, some skeptics have stopped taking them seriously.
But something feels different about this year's budget — if only because of the circumstances in which board members are considering it.
In the past year, Angelenos rallied behind the district's teachers, who went on strike in Januaryto demand higher salaries, smaller class sizes and more support staff for schools. LAUSD officials agreed to pay for all these things, though they warned the gains would only be temporary unless everyone involved could find a way to pay for them.
Just last week, Plan A to fund the agreement long-term — a ballot measure to raise taxes for LAUSD — failed in a special election by a wide margin.
Superintendent Austin Beutner said the budget he's submitting to the LAUSD board Tuesday will avoid a deficit over its three-year course — even if a Plan B for generating that revenue doesn't come together during that period.
"Ending balance" refers to the unassigned balances, but doesn't include "assigned balances" — funds received in previous years that it has committed to spend in future years.
But Beutner said district officials will need to burn through almost all of the $837 million LAUSD currently has in the bank — or, technically, stockpiled "unassigned" funds — to avoid straying into the red toward the end of the three-year budget period.
"The first two years are pretty solid," Beutner said. "They have been before the strike, during the strike and after the strike. The third year is still quite tenuous."
Beutner, like other LAUSD leaders before him, has issued similar warnings in the past. In fact, CONTINUE READING: LAUSD's Plan To Avoid Financial Meltdown For The Next Three Years: LAist
