District follows November election, considers contingency plans if Brown’s plan fails

Several new initiatives for taxes supporting education in California have emerged in competition with the proposal of Gov. Jerry Brown.

The Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District has considered the consequences of the rejection of all three initiatives and has identified the need to develop contingency plans involving the reallocation of funds.

“Should the tax measures fail, trigger cuts in the amount of $370 per students are a possibility,” superintendent Bob Mistele said. “We could see potential reductions of $550,000 each year for two years, beginning in the 2013 to 2014 school year.”

However, Mistele said that if reductions become necessary, they will be made “as far away from the classroom as possible.”

After last spring’s ratification of a parcel tax, the school board has set up a solid list of feasible ways to alleviate possible budget crises without affecting services for students.

These goals include the preservation of a 4 percent general fund reserve for economic uncertainties, the holding of a reserve held at 10 percent of general fund expenditure, and the creation of a balanced budget trend and continued creations of balanced budgets.

Principal Jeff Anderson said the school district’s budget is in “pretty good shape [and is] looking much better than that of previous years, mainly because the parcel tax was passed.”

In addition, both Los Gatos and Saratoga High are “Basic Aid” schools, meaning that the amount of money they receive from the state is not based on the number of students enrolled, as in most other schools, but on monetary allocations in categories and on property tax revenue in the community.

“We’ve given back all of the money that the state used to give us,” said Anderson. Now, the school receives a set amount of money from the state for specific categories such as Site Councils, textbooks and library funds.

However, when public schools across the state take a hit, Basic Aid schools such as Saratoga feel obligated to relinquish an equal percentage of their funds to the state.

“[Most] other schools don’t run a system like ours,” Anderson said. “As a school, we decided that we would take a cut on our categorical money because we already have our property taxes to compensate for the loss.”

Although the school has given about $1.4 million to the state, the parcel tax had raised close to $900 thousand to make up for the financial loss, therefore ensuring a stable school budget.

At this stage, Anderson believes that the budget will remain steady as long as the school follows its current spending and saving policies.

“We’re very grateful to be in a school that is pretty well-off in comparison to schools in different districts,” said Anderson.