By Brittany Hanson/Garden Grove Journal
The Garden Grove and Westminster school districts have had very busy years in 2010. In Garden Grove, the big news was the passing of the Measure A school improvements bond, posting high marks, trying to keep afloat during large education cutbacks.
Westminster saw the re-election of its incumbents for the school district and a new superintendent.
At a time when money is short and projects are long, the Garden Grove Unified School District can now look forward to a group effort to fix its plumbing. And windows. And central air. And outlets.
Eventually.
All of this will be determined in the future as the stages of Measure A, the local education bond, unfold. The measure put forth by the school board is for $250 million in school bonds to be matched by $200 million in state funds to update schools across the district was passed handily.
“There’s a lot of procedural things that need to take place,”said Sue McCann, assistant superintendent of business.
On top of eventually getting new upgrades to buildings, the Academic Performance Index (API) for GGUSD upgraded itself this year.
GGUSD posted strong gains on the API with 86 percent of schools recording growth from the previous year and – for the first time – the district-wide average API now surpasses the state target of 800.
The budget is, and has been the constant tune of conversation in and around the school district. This year, GGUSD’s general fund expected revenue is $365,262,988 and the total general fund expenditures are listed to be $438,790,589.
The gap between these numbers is $73,527,601.
Although the school board must legally have an accepted school budget, there does not seem to be this kind of distinction for Sacramento.
“The budget needed to have been passed over 90 days ago,” said Superintendent Laura Schwalm, “By law we [GGUSD] are required. The only ones who are not required to follow the law [to pass a budget on time] are the state legislators.”
In the Westminster School Distruct, Richard Tauer took over on July 1 as superintendent of the 10,000-pupil school system that serves kids in grades K-8 in Westminster and surrounding areas.
