California schools have been on a roller coaster of a budget ride, but at least they have been able to actually ride the ride this year.
For the first time, leaders in public education circles were allowed to sit with the governor's staff and help choose which school programs to cut or salvage in the latest version of the state budget.

"It's never happened before," said Kevin Gordon, executive director of the California Association of School Business Officials. "It was very collaborative. We went back and forth till we got an agreement that we all could live with."

The "we" in this case was the Education Coalition, a powerhouse consisting of the major education groups in this state, including Gordon's organization as well as the California Teachers Association, the California School Boards Association and the California State PTA.
The coalition's involvement was a departure from the past, Gordon said, when governors would tend to present their finished budgets to the education community, seeking after-the-fact support.

The collaboration resulted in a revised budget, released two weeks ago, that looks notably different from the governor's January proposal. It also has widespread approval among education leaders.

Overall, cuts in the latest version are less extreme than before, although a few programs took deeper hits than others, including deferred maintenance and gifted and talented education.

"Nobody is having a party, but everyone is breathing a bit easier," Gordon said. "It was the best bad news we could have hoped for."

The better news comes amid a rocky budgeting season for schools -- one that isn't over yet. The state Legislature still must approve the budget, which calls for tax increases, something many legislators oppose.

"There has been so much uncertainty and anxiety this year," said Dave Gordon, superintendent of the Elk Grove Unified School District. "It has been hard on employees and bad for kids."

The difficulties started last year, when it became clear the state was heading into a deep fiscal crisis.

In a one-two punch, the state removed about $1 billion from the schools budget for 2002-03, promising to pay it at a later date. At the same time, the governor's proposed budget released in January and subsequent forecasts called for even steeper cuts -- in the $2 billion to $3 billion vicinity -- for the 2003-04 year.

The news triggered near-panic in districts across the state. School systems spent the spring scrambling to notify employees of possible layoffs, putting the brakes on book orders and beginning the process of increasing class sizes in some grades.

The governor's January proposal called for the consolidation of 64 special programs -- known as categoricals -- into one large block grant that schools could spend as they wished.

Categoricals are special pots -- or categories -- of money for specific purposes such as gifted and talented education or textbook purchases. The January budget called for an across-the-board reduction of more than 10 percent for the 64 categoricals.

Through some intense give-and-take, the Education Coalition found ways to include more basic per-pupil funding in the revised May budget by stripping money from other programs. State revenues also were coming in higher than previously expected, easing the financial strain a bit.

In the revised budget, schools remain short about $1.5 billion, and they receive no cost-of-living increase for salary raises or to cover rising employee health benefit costs in 2003-04.

But most categoricals were left standing, even though a few were substantially reduced. Among those were the deferred maintenance fund for building upkeep and repair, which was cut by two-thirds, to $77 million.

The pot for books and instructional materials also was reduced by 30 percent, to $175 million. Supplemental funding for instructing gifted and talented students was cut 18 percent, to $47 million. The $29 million Miller-Unruh Reading program, designed to assist struggling readers, was cut entirely for the year.

The revised budget would offer schools greater flexibility in making ends meet by allowing them to use part of their reserves.

The May revised budget, if approved, would enable most districts to avoid widespread layoffs, said Scott Plotkin, executive director of the California School Boards Association.

However, the proposed reductions have school districts taking painful steps to balance their own budgets, which must be adopted by June 30 regardless of whether the Legislature produces a budget by then.

In Elk Grove Unified, leaders have negotiated lower health benefits for teachers and higher workloads for custodians. Folsom Cordova Unified cut several management and classified positions, and its teachers volunteered to take a one-year pay cut.

In Sacramento City Unified School District, planned textbook purchases are being postponed because of the expected drop in instructional materials money.

In recent years, Sacramento City Unified had about $74 to spend per student for books and teaching materials. For the current year and most likely for next year, too, the available amount has dropped to about $48 per student. Yet the actual cost is about $100 per student, said Kathi Cooper, associate superintendent for instruction and learning.

As a result, students in grades seven through 12 will go another year with old science books -- some dating back to the early 1990s.

And Sacramento City will not be able to buy all the language arts workbooks, writing journals and other supplemental materials it had planned for grades kindergarten through eight this year.

Instead, the district plans to purchase master copies of workbooks and other items, known in education parlance as "consumables" because when a student writes in them they are used up. Those masters then can legally be copied for students.

The copies won't be as glossy or nicely bound, Cooper said, but they will get the job done.