Lobbying for more local budget control

By Terilyn Finders

Local budget control is a critical issue that must be addressed if we are to meet the needs of our students. I believe I have the skills and experience to work with our district and political leaders to gain more local budget control for LVUSD.

Essentially, there are two budgets from Sacramento: General Purpose and Categoricals. The General budget covers everything from utilities to salaries. Catergoricals target specific programs, such as class size reduction, textbooks and technology.

The problem is that there are too many strings attached to Catergorical budgets.

Often Categorical programs mandate that districts match or supplement funds for programs created by the Legislature. Examples of this are class size reduction, digital high school, construction funding, school renovation, staff development days and others.

To implement these mandated programs we must match or supplement Categoricals with money from our General fund. Clearly, this requires taking money away from other programs including salaries and benefit advances for our staff, more counselors, intervention and support programs, arts education and the many other services and enrichment programs that we would like to offer our students.

I believe my communication skills will lend strength to the board as it lobbies the bureaucracy for more budget flexibility; I would like to work with our district to gain more local budget control so we can meet the needs of our students.