California's wealthiest public schools won a major concession in the state budget revision Wednesday when Gov. Gray Davis dropped his plan to seize $126.2 million in local property taxes from those districts, including Saratoga, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara in the South Bay.
Instead, the budget revision proposes to cut state funding to California's 60 so-called ``basic-aid'' districts by roughly $37 million, or 4.5 percent -- which, proportionately, is about the same size as the proposed cuts facing the rest of California's nearly 1,000 districts. But the state would let basic-aid districts keep money raised locally.
``This is certainly better than the property-tax grab that was in the governor's original proposal,'' said Cynthia Hall Ranii, superintendent of the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District, which stands to lose about $1 million out of a $25 million budget under the new proposal. ``But the cuts are deep for all schools, and everybody is in a tight situation.''
Paul Perotti, superintendent of the Santa Clara Unified School District, said the district stands to lose roughly $6 million under the revised budget -- well below the $14.5 million that it would have lost under the original proposal. The district, which received about $72 million in local property taxes in 2002-2003, had been planning for more than 150 layoffs. Perotti hopes to pare that number to under 20.
Basic-aid districts, because of high residential real-estate values or large amounts of commercial property, can generate most of their own school funding through local property taxes. These districts receive only $120 per student from the state, but may keep local tax revenue that exceeds minimum funding guaranteed by the state. As a result, many basic-aid districts can spend far more per student than other districts.
Davis had proposed to siphon off much of the excess tax revenue from basic-aid districts, but backed off this plan in the face of fierce opposition from some of California's wealthiest districts, including Palo Alto Unified.
Now, Davis is proposing only to eliminate the $120-per-student basic aid payments, which total about $17 million, and to cut categorical funding to basic-aid districts by an additional $20 million.