By Brittany Hanson/Garden Grove Journal
Schools in the Garden Grove Unified School District are going to be asked to do more with considerably less in the oncoming school year.
With high school graduation caps barely out of the air, the school board was tasked with adopting the 2012-2013 school year budget at Tuesday’s meeting and putting waivers in place for increased class sizes.
The total fund for the oncoming school year is $225,893,792.00, which is a difference of $19,819,366 from the now-closing school year’s budget, which was $245,713,158.00.
Class sizes, normally restricted to a ratio of 29.9 to one, have been adjusted in some cases to 33 to one. Normally, there are penalty fees incurred per student over the limit but the waivers will excuse those fees for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 for grade 4 to grade 8.
According to Alan Trudell, GGUSD’s public information officer, although the budget has been approved and accepted in the district, there is a chance that things might change come November.
Trudell said that the governor’s state budget has built-in projections from a ballot tax measure to be voted on.
“That very well might fail and then, well, that would mean some serious changes for the rest of us [recipients of the budget],” said Trudell, “There’s definitely a chance it might not go through.”
GGUSD stated in the agenda that in relation to the unknown variable of the Governor’s tax that it was prepared to make cuts of up to $20.1 million in 2012-2013, $56.2 million in cuts in 2013-14 and even an additional $87.2 million in 2014-2015.
Also, as a result of agreements with the Garden Grove Education Association, which represents teachers and other faculty, the school year has eliminated one furlough day. This makes the active school year 177 days total.
The GGUSD serves most of Garden Grove as well as portions of Anaheim, Cypress, Santa Ana, Stanton and Westminster.
