Last year, people marched down Broadway in Santa Maria to protest a record number of proposed teacher layoffs at local schools. This year, no permanent teachers are facing layoffs.
In 2009, the Lucia Del Mar school district sent out pink slips to 229 teachers. This year it sent out 50.
So why the pink slip roller coaster every year? Look to Sacramento, said Santa Maria Joint Union High School District Superintendent Dr. Doug Kimberly.
“Part of the problem,” Kimberly said, “is that if Sacramento doesn’t pass a budget, there’s not much of a penalty.”
School districts are legally required to pass a budget by June 30, whether the state has a budget of its own or not. Their budgets, Kimberly explained, are based largely off the governor’s proposal released in January.
Anyone who has lived in California over the last few years—or has even spent some time in the state—can likely attest to that fact: Even though the state Constitution says a budget must be passed by June 30, there are no repercussions for lawmakers if they don’t meet that deadline. In fact, Sacramento hasn’t met the budget deadline since 2006.
“The state, and, by extension, school budgets are moving targets year to year,” said Caren Ray, a high school teacher in Santa Maria.
Ray—who was one of the teachers facing pink slips last year but was ultimately kept on by the district—said it’s understandable why districts go through the pink slip process
every year.
“They have to protect themselves fiscally,” she added.
If districts don’t issue layoff notices—which allow them to remove the notified teachers’ salaries from their books—the districts have no way of balancing their budgets. Once the state passes a budget, and if the monies are there, those positions can basically be hired back. But again, that’s if the funds work out properly.
“If the state budget isn’t there, it’s a crapshoot,” Ray added.
Forty percent of education funding comes from local property taxes, while 60 percent comes from the state in the form of sales and income tax.
The state’s share of education funding is supposed to be guaranteed by Proposition 98, the 1988 ballot measure that mandated 40 percent of the state budget would be spent on education.
Part of the ongoing pink-slip problem is that the mandated 40 percent is based on sales and income tax. In years past, that wasn’t an issue, but in this economic climate, state tax receipts are anything but stable.
“The funding formula doesn’t really allow legislators to make education a priority,” Kimberly said, adding that even when legislators have the best of intentions toward education funding, volatility in state revenues can mean the dollars just aren’t there.
And then there are times when Sacramento cuts education funding, if in roundabout ways.
In March, lawmakers in Sacramento passed legislation that replaced California’s 6 percent per gallon sales tax on gasoline with a 17.3 cent per gallon excise tax. This had the effect of decreasing the pool of money guaranteed by Proposition 98 by approximately $800 million.
“[The gasoline tax change is] a fairly important piece of legislation that really hasn’t gotten a whole lot of air time,” Kimberly said. “It will create greater volatility in the funding formula, and could lower the benchmark in Prop. 98. It will be a smaller pie to cut.”
With such volatility in the funds available for education, it’s inevitable that districts will be faced with spending cuts. When “84, sometimes 90 percent” of school district costs are spent on staff salaries, according to Kimberly, those cuts translate to pink slips.
“You could cut all extracurricular activities—say no more sports, no more arts—it wouldn’t matter,” Ray said. “The fat has been trimmed.”
In light of the continuing pink-slip phenomenon, Kimberly has a plea for the Capitol: “I would really like to see our politicians in Sacramento examine the funding formula and really make education a priority.”
Contact Staff Writer Nicholas Walter at nwalter@santamariasun.com..
This article appears in May 20-27, 2010.