New state budget is good news for Berkeley schools

May 17, 2011 11:00 am by Frances Dinkelspiel

The Berkeley Unified School District Board

The final numbers haven’t been completely crunched, and the legislature hasn’t passed the budget yet, but the fiscal situation for the Berkeley Unified School District for next year looks much better than previously thought.

Gov. Jerry Brown released his “May revise” budget on Monday and it contained an unexpected $6.6 billion in new revenues. Brown applied $3 billion of the money to K-12 education, which means BUSD won’t have to cut as much as $330-$700 per student, the numbers projected as recently as last week, according to Supt. Bill Huyett.

“We’re actually delighted with what we know so far,” said Huyett. “Overall it’s much better than we hoped.”

The news was not so good for childcare funds, which are used to pay for preschool children to stay all day at school, said Huyett. The governor cut those funds deeper than he had in his January budget.

BUSD is looking to eliminate the four remaining pre-K classrooms that offer care for as long as 9.5 hours each day. The district will now have to find additional ways to trim the budget, said Huyett, and more cuts could impact the district’s attempts to close the achievement gap. The childcare services mostly serve families of color who need full daycare so the parents can work, according to Pablo Paredes, chair of the School Governance Council for the Hopkins, King and Franklin preschools.

The district will have a better sense of the 2001-1012 budget by the end of the week, said Huyett.

2 Comments

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  • AUSD WATCH

    I am perplexed on how Jerry Brown is sending more money to Alameda County while Sheila Jordan is in office (I know he endorsed her before but that is just party favors). She clearly lacks any competence to manage tax payer money; she also believes that Unified School District meetings are more than adequate forums for community participation on school district matters – 3 minutes at a time.

    After all it was under her “leadership” that the Oakland Unified had to be bailed out by the state (http://articles.sfgate.com/2003-02-09/news/17477443_1_dennis-chaconas-district-s-budget-oakland-s-fremont-high-school/7) and under her “leadership” that Emeryville Unified was ripped off by the DL Handy administration and had to be bailed by the state (http://emeryvilletattler.blogspot.com/2010/12/school-board-seeks-new-superintendent.html) and subsequently by hiring Superintendent Steven Wesley, who misrepresented his resume.

    Sheila Jordan in her own re-election statement was still a proponent of local autonomy, having not learned any lesson from the Oakland disaster, let us all into the Emeryville disaster (http://www.smartvoter.org/2006/06/06/ca/alm/vote/jordan_s/paper2.html). In her own words: “I am also concerned that if incompetent or corrupt persons got hold of
    this proposed county super-office, they could cause harm to our
    educational system on a countywide scale. What if the same people who
    bankrupted Oakland were to get hold of the County Office?”

    And I ask: What if…?  Might they bankrupt another school district?

  • AUSD WATCH

    I am perplexed on how Jerry Brown is sending more money to Alameda County while Sheila Jordan is in office (I know he endorsed her before but that is just party favors). She clearly lacks any competence to manage tax payer money; she also believes that Unified School District meetings are more than adequate forums for community participation on school district matters – 3 minutes at a time.

    After all it was under her “leadership” that the Oakland Unified had to be bailed out by the state (http://articles.sfgate.com/2003-02-09/news/17477443_1_dennis-chaconas-district-s-budget-oakland-s-fremont-high-school/7) and under her “leadership” that Emeryville Unified was ripped off by the DL Handy administration and had to be bailed by the state (http://emeryvilletattler.blogspot.com/2010/12/school-board-seeks-new-superintendent.html) and subsequently by hiring Superintendent Steven Wesley, who misrepresented his resume.

    Sheila Jordan in her own re-election statement was still a proponent of local autonomy, having not learned any lesson from the Oakland disaster, let us all into the Emeryville disaster (http://www.smartvoter.org/2006/06/06/ca/alm/vote/jordan_s/paper2.html). In her own words: “I am also concerned that if incompetent or corrupt persons got hold of
    this proposed county super-office, they could cause harm to our
    educational system on a countywide scale. What if the same people who
    bankrupted Oakland were to get hold of the County Office?”

    And I ask: What if…?  Might they bankrupt another school district?