Watch The State Budget Continues To Be A Disaster on Viaway

We spent the last few days meeting with School Board Members from all over the State of California trying to figure out how to best deal with the next State budget. The word that we are getting from the State is that the budget shortfall is expected to be $20.7 Billion over the next 18 months. This weekend our Superintendent and fiscal services department are crunching numbers and trying to come up with the amount that we will have to cut and a list of proposed budget reductions that the Board and community can begin to discuss. If the Superintendent and his staff are able to pull it all together by Tuesday December 8th, we will begin to look at the list of proposed reductions at the meeting on Tuesday night. We will not be taking action to make any cuts at the December 8th meeting, it will only be on the agenda for discussion. We will likely begin acting on proposed reductions at the January 12, 2010 meeting.

Our district has already made drastic cuts over the last few years, including million in cuts made in 2009. To give you an idea of cuts that we have already made, here are two links to lists of budget reductions made in June 2009:

June 2, 2009
June 9, 2009

There must be fundamental change in the State of California if school districts are ever going to get out of the cycle of cutting the services that we offer students. Our elected officials constantly indicate that they hold education as their highest priority, yet when times get tough, those same elected officials slash education spending. Every system in the State of California suffers when economic times are as tough as they are right now, but if we as a society fail to maintain our education system, the effects of short term economic downturn will be long term societal failure.

Earlier in 2009 we attempted to pass a $99 parcel tax that would have greatly reduced the necessity to further cut education spending for our students. The measure received 59% approval from voters, but failed to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary for passage. Most school districts that surround the Mt. Diablo district have passed their own parcel taxes and those communities have reduced the need to make reductions during these tough economic times. We must pass a local funding measure in the near term if we want to support our kids and avoid further reductions.

On December 8th we will begin the process of looking at reductions and we need our community to weigh in on the reductions that will be proposed. We also need our community to participate in the process by making other suggestions of areas where you think we may be able to make reductions.

On December 14th there will be a community meeting to discuss action plans on how we are going to move forward as a community to protect services that we provide to our students. A link to the information for that meeting is contained here.

The School Board needs to hear from you on the issue of the budget and solutions that will allow the district to remain solvent. Gary Eberhart, Paul Strange, and Sherry Whitmarsh can all be reached by e-mail at gary@mdusd.net, paul@mdusd.net, and sherry@mdusd.net. Gary can be reached by phone at 925-304-1546 and Paul can be reached at 925-567-3030. Dick Allen and Linda Mayo also have e-mail addresses and those addresses can be found on the district web site. You can also post questions and comments to this blog and we will respond to those questions. Please note that we are looking for actionable suggestions that will be helpful in finding solutions to the problem. We also welcome qu...

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