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Srini Vasan
The
Business Office has been busy the past two months preparing the budgets
for both school districts. It has been a challenging task since the governor
has proposed several cuts for the next year (Fiscal year 2003-04). The
budget cuts have impacted many school districts affecting certificated,
classified and administrative staff. School districts such as Clovis,
Fresno Unified and many others had to let go quite a few staff in order
to bring the deficit spending down. Fortunately for Yosemite High School
District, due to tight fiscal management in the current and previous years,
we have a strong ending balance. This allows us to spare staff reduction
but still requires us to cut down expenses.
Every year the state gives the school districts COLA (Cost of Living Allowance).
For the year 2002-03 the COLA was 1.65%. For the coming year 2003-04,
the governor has proposed no COLA and to make matters worse could take
money away to the tune of 2%. So, instead of positive COLA, it could be
a year of negative COLA. And, when salary increases are committed for
multiple years, you can imagine the challenge the budget office faces
when it comes to balancing the budget without deficit. Our proposed budgets
for both school districts will have deficit spending for the next couple
of years; but, as I had mentioned before, the monies we have saved for
the rainy day are going to come in handy to soften the budget blow.
On a different subject, in a recent developer study in which school districts
of the same size were compared to the number of district administrative
staff districts employ, both YHS and Coarsegold came at the very bottom
- meaning we have a lean staff in comparison to others. That speaks very
highly of our administrative staff and I congratulate them for their hard
work. Keep up the good work, team!
School
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