The San Ramon Valley Unified District won't get as much funding this year as they did last year from the state. There's no question about that. However, where the uncertainty lies is exactly how much less it will be.

On Tuesday night, Gary Black, SRVUSD's assistant superintendent of business, presented two scenarios on what state funding would look like if Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative passed or failed.

Brown's initiative, in short, would raise the sales tax, as well as increase the income tax on those who make $250,000 or more. If this initiative passes, it would prevent a statewide "trigger" cut of $5 billion in public education, Brown has said.

A bleak affair

For the SRVUSD, Black said this reduction would equate to about a $14 million to $15 million hole.

"It's pretty bleak," he told the school board. "More bleak than what it sounds like. It's a significant amount of money."

The loss in funding would include a $370 average daily attendance (ADA) funding per student (about $10.8 million total), $600,000 to $1.4 million in transportation funding and about $3 million in teacher salary and benefits costs.

The best case?

If Brown's plan goes through in November, according to Black's presentation, the "challenge" to the district would be less. It would then have to fill a hole to the tune of $3.6 million to $4.4 million.

This was, actually, the "best case" scenario. Under this, there would be "flat funding," or the same funding level as the current year from the state. The cuts under the "best case" would come from the removal of transportation funding (about $600,000 to $1.4 million), as well as costs due to teachers' pay and benefits ($3 million).

A continuation of cuts

These reductions come on the heels of continued cuts from the state. Late last year, in November, state officials announced that California will be receiving $3.7 billion less in revenues this fiscal year than they expected.

That resulted in an automatic mid-year cut of $2 billion to education and social services.

Terry Koehne, a spokesman for the San Ramon Valley Unified School District, told Danville Patch in November that the district expects to receive $7.8 million less in state funds the remainder of this fiscal year.

Rather than cut from the district's $223 million budget, district administrators plan to use $7.8 million of the $18 million available reserve funds to plug the gap.

In November, Koehne noted that, over the past four years, the district had already been receiving $30 million less a year in state funds than it's entitled to receive under Proposition 98.

Black also noted in his presentation that under Brown's proposed budget, there is the point of replacing the current revenue limit funding model with a new "weight average." Black, however, couldn't comment on what that means or how that would shake out.

"Right now there is no way to know. There is not enough info but it could be significant," he said.

Taking a dip in the reserve

So as these challenges continue to trickle down from the state, whether Brown's initiative passes or not, the district will have to further dip into the reserve.

"Twenty million dollars (in reserve), whether it's good planning, or being conservative, whatever you want to call it, we will survive but not for long," Black said if these cuts continue.

"Imagine what it'd be like if we did not have these reserve dollars," said Board of Education president Greg Marvel. "You have a lot of other district that will have these same issues next year and they don't have the reserves we have."

Stick with Danville and San Ramon Patch as we follow this story.

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