Some San Mateo County educators pleased but hoping for more from state budget proposal

Diego Ochoa, superintendent of San Mateo-Foster City School District, shared appreciation for the additional funding, particularly for special education which is slated to receive an additional $500 million of ongoing support.

But Ochoa also shared concerns with propping up vital school programs with one-time funds largely through Proposition 98, a fund established in 1988 to ensure a minimum amount of funding to school districts, and the General Fund.

School kitchen renovations, other school renovation projects, an expansion of farm-to-school demonstration projects, transportation programs, college pathways programs and others would be supported with one-time dollars if the budget were approved as proposed.

“If given the choice, I’m going to choose the one-year investment,” Ochoa said. “But as it pertains to what steps need to be taken to make education a priority in the state, we need to see long-term investments made.”

Kevin Skelly, superintendent at the San Mateo Union High School District, shared hopes the state would contribute additional one-time funds to pensions, noting a substantial and growing portion of the district’s budget goes toward paying down retirement liabilities.

The state has contributed surplus dollars to pensions in the past two budget cycles but omitted the contribution for the most recent proposal. Current projections show the state could see a $31 billion surplus at the close of the fiscal year.

“For me, drawing down that pension liability seems like a good use of one-time money,” Skelly said.

Alternatively, Newsom proposed a cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, of more than 5.3% to the state’s Local Control Funding Formula, which is used to determine how much funding must be spent per student in certain districts. The increase is one of the largest made to the LCFF since its adoption and means districts will receive $15,261 per student and up to $20,855 when accounting for other initiatives.

To address projected dips in public school enrollment, the budget also proposes giving districts the option to submit a three-year average when calculating its average daily attendance for students, a figure used to determine how much funding the district will receive.

Burlingame School District Superintendent Chris Mount-Benites said the additional COLA will be helpful for state-funded districts like BSD but noted a number of funding system issues that still remain. Like Skelly, Mount-Benites noted the district is facing a substantial pension obligation the increased COLA funds will be used to pay down rather than go toward students.

And the three-year funding option still fails to address issues with using ADA to determine how much funding a district should receive per student given that the costs associated with educating a student do not dip when they are absent, Mount-Benites noted. Regardless of whether 90% or 100% of students show up to class, Mount-Benites said a district still has to pay a teacher and all other bills in full.

Instead of holding discussions around adjustments, Mount-Benites said the formula should be updated to always give districts what was promised in prior years while adjusting for inflation and potentially offering additional funds to cover unforeseen costs.

“It still isn’t making the math quite work but it’s better than where we started,” Mount-Benites said. “I just think having this annual conversation every year, making tiny changes and struggling to make the budget work again for everybody is just sort of in some ways silly.”

Still, a lot could change from now and when the budget is required to be adopted in June. Andriana Shea, president of the San Bruno Park School District Board of Trustees, who shared her own support for some items in the budget, said she’ll be waiting for the “vague” document to be finalized.

She shared optimism that state legislators would adopt a “full-fledged plan” that addresses “the serious challenges facing public education in California,” a sentiment Mount-Benites backed.

“I’m always optimistic,” Mount-Benites said. “I don’t think I could do this work if I wasn’t.”

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