The financial landscape painted by Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget for the 2024-2025 school year took center stage in a Coronado Unified School District (CUSD) board meeting on March 14, prompting discussions on strategic adjustments and budget cuts.
Key updates highlighted in the 2023-2024 Second Interim Budget Report include a $256,675 cut in revenue projections, primarily attributed to reductions in federal funding sources such as Impact Aid. Conversely, the district anticipates a $83,883 increase in state revenues, albeit with cautionary undertones surrounding the accuracy of such projections.
Shifts in expenditure patterns were also noted, with cutbacks in certificated salaries and operational costs.
Details of 2024-2025 budget
The crux of the discussion revolved around Newsom’s budget proposal, which aimed to address a $38 billion state budget gap. The Governor’s Budget proposes no cuts in overall Proposition 98 funding.
According to Deputy Superintendent Donnie Salamanca’s presentation, the budget also “does not include any proposals to sweep unallocated funds from programs” and “due to the Governor’s Budget revenue assumptions and the Administration’s treatment of the Proposition 98 minimum guarantee, there is no need for the state to defer payments to Local Education Agencies (LEAs).”
“What we’re seeing is we don’t have the revenues,” Salamanca said. “It’s a little bit of creative financing, and it’s getting a lot of folks concerned.” Furthermore, he added, Newsom is proposing to pull $18.8 billion out of state reserves.
Discrepancies between the Governor’s Office projections and those of the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) fueled apprehensions, with the latter projecting a $58 billion to $73 billion budget gap.
“They’re [the LAO] anticipating this continued struggle of statewide revenues into the 2025-2026 fiscal year,” Salamanca said. “They’re recommending a little bit more of a conservative approach … we’ve seen a couple of months more revenue projections [and] it’s trending much closer to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.”
The district faces a projected $2.3 million deficit in spending for the upcoming school year. In response, the governing board has proposed cutbacks that would affect Coronado schools’ mental health counseling, subject language, program specialists and maintenance.
More information about CUSD’s budget discussion, which was held in a special meeting by the governing board on March 4, can be found here.
“We’re committed to communicating with transparency and integrity,” Salamanca said.
Community members and CUSD staff ask to not cut mental health services
The school district currently has a staff of eight clinical counselors serving 2,700 students.
Three community members, including Coronado Middle School (CMS) guidance counselor Brian Garcia, asked the governing board not to cut the school district’s mental health services.
Garcia stressed the importance of maintaining health counseling services. He said schools serve as crucial platforms for providing prevention, intervention and positive development services to students.
Garcia said school employee mental health professionals develop relationships and students are more likely to seek out counseling when services are available on campuses.
Garcia cited statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and the CMS 2022-2023 California Healthy Kids Survey asserting that 27% of sixth graders, 20% of seventh graders and 32% of eighth graders reported experiencing chronic sadness and hopelessness.
“We need help. Hoping that y’all can find money in the budget to save our counselors,” Garcia said.
School district’s efforts to keep budget afloat
According to Salamanca, CUSD is adjusting staffing levels through attrition, opening its interdistrict transfer application window “close to a month and a half in advance” and launching online registration to address budget challenges amid declining enrollment.
“It’s going to be very important for parents of the community to register their students early so we can have a realistic number of how many students we should be staffing for,” Salamanca said.
The district aims to increase revenue by exploring alternative funding sources and applying for grants to sustain programs as it approaches basic aid status by the 2027-2028 school year.
“The next time that the state will really pay attention to 2026-2028 is this upcoming budget cycle, where we’ll be building a budget for [the following years],” Salamanca said. “That’s when the state and the county actually have the ability to disapprove our budget, essentially.”
District Superintendent Karl Mueller said, “Additional cuts may be necessary for [CUSD] to achieve [its] objective of reaching basic aid.”
Mueller emphasized the district’s commitment to exploring alternative avenues for cost saving beyond the March 15 deadline, which is when the school district must inform employees that they may be released for the following school year beginning July 1.
“We very intentionally built systems that supported this district, as a result of the pandemic,” Mueller said. “This (budget-cutting) is not something anyone wants to do. Unfortunately, the situation in Sacramento necessitated us to plan strategically.”
Maria Simon, the public information officer for Coronado Unified School District, said the school district’s current financial challenges are unrelated to the $4.5 million it must pay in a civil suit involving Jordan Bucklew, a former girls basketball assistant coach who pleaded guilty to a felony underage sex charge with a 17-year-old Coronado High School (CHS) basketball player from 2019-2020.
On March 15, CUSD announced that they will “file post-trial motions with the court to challenge the verdict issued on March 11 … in the case Jane Doe v Coronado USD.”
