Mountain View Whisman Depends Upon Local Support

This May, Governor Brown released his revised budget proposal for 2012-13. The budget reflects the need to close a shortfall of $15.7 billion, which the Governor hopes to accomplish through a series of sales and income tax increases. Under the proposal, if additional taxes are not approved by voters in November, then the state would implement "trigger cuts" approximately $441 per student from state schools. For , this would have an impact of approximately $2.5 million. 

Most people do not realize that our District’s financial health is directly tied to the State of California, which currently has the third worst unemployment rate in the country. Unfortunately, rising housing prices and a robust economy in Mountain View does not translate to improved funding for our District’s students.

If implemented, the $441 trigger cut would be in addition to the approximately $915 (12.2 percent) per student cut we have received from the State of California since 2007-08. Going forward, the total cut would amount to approximately $6.8 million per year. 

Of course, the cost of personnel, services, materials, and equipment has continued and will continue to rise, regardless of the loss of state funding.  Some costs are beyond our control, like health and welfare premiums, which have gone up by 34.8 percent since 2007-08, and special education programs, which have gone up by 23 percent.

In order to fill the gap in state funding and to minimize its impact on students, the Mountain View School District has implemented a variety of measures to run the organization more efficiently. For example, since 2007-08, the average pupil to teacher ratio has increased by four students, and the average class size has gone from 24.6 students to 26.8 students. Schools have also increased in size without increasing administrative, clerical, or custodial support, and we have worked successfully with our classified and certificated employee associations and with our management team to shift a greater share of health and welfare costs to individual employees.

Notwithstanding these efforts, we would still be one of those 188 at-risk school districts if not for local revenue that we receive from a variety of sources, including our local parcel tax, revenue from the lease of surplus school facilities, revenue sharing from the City of Mountain View, and grants from generous community partners like the , our Parent Teacher Associations, , and the . 

Between 2007-08 and 2010-11, local revenue went from $6.5 million (16 percent of total revenue) to $10.4 million (23.7 percent of total revenue). This increase wasn’t enough to make up for the increase in operational costs, but it nearly got us back to the total revenue per student we had received in 2007-08. For that, we are extremely grateful.

If you would like to share your thoughts about these or any other District programs, please do not hesitate to contact me at cgoldman@mvwsd.org.

Craig

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This is the May 30, 2012 Superintendent's Newsletter.  The newsletter is also available on the District's website at www.mvwsd.org.