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Balancing the Budget Committee, Travis Unified School District

The Travis Unified School District has organized a large committee consisting of parents , teachers, classified staff, and administrators to provide recommendations to the Board of Education for reducing the district's budget. The budget has significant structural problems which must be addressed in order for the district to maintain financial solvency into the future. The committee is interested in your ideas for reducing expenses to balance the budget for 2004 - 05, 2005 - 06, and 06 - 07.

Role of the Balancing the Budget Committee

This committee is advisory to the superintendent. The committee's charge is to develop a list of possible budget reduction / modifications to be considered in balancing the TUSD budget for 2005 - 06. Further, the committee will focus on the financial shortfall that the district must prepare for in 2006 - 07 and 2007- 08. The district budget projections for out years makes it clear that we have a long term structural budget problem that must be addressed.

The committee will make recommendations to the superintendent in priority order with justification statements for each consideration. It will be the superintendent's responsibility to study the committee's report and to make recommendations to the board of education for consideration. The superintendent reserves the right to eliminate items, add items, or reorder the priority list before presenting the report to the board.

The board of education has the responsibility to discuss the superintendent's recommendations and to act on them. The board may approve the recommendations as presented, modify the recommendations to their satisfaction, or return the recommendations to the superintendent for further study.

What has caused this problem in the TUSD district?

The Travis Unified School District has one of the lowest unified school district base revenue limits in the state. The revenue limit is the money per student provided annually to California school districts based upon a complex formula. There are wide variations in the per student base revenue limits between districts across the state based upon each district’s property tax rate that was established after the passage of Proposition 13. Since Travis USD was mostly grazing land with a low assessed evaluation at that time, the district has been locked into that rate ever since. Travis made up that loss in funding by receiving money from the Federal government in the form of Impact Aid. This is money given to school districts that have significant amounts of federal property (military bases, Indian reservations or forest lands) in their districts that are removed from the tax rolls. Impact Aid is also funded using a formula on a per student basis.

With Travis Air Force Base eliminating 65% of the on base housing within the next three years, the Impact Aid that historically made up the difference of what Travis was not receiving in property taxes will decline sharply. Without that Impact Aid generated by the military students, and even if those students are replaced by civilian students because of new homes being built, Travis faces on-going cuts of at least $500,000 in each of the next three years for a total of $1.5 million. This is in addition to the $1.6 million already cut from a $39 million dollar budget because of California’s budget problems, just to keep its current programs, let alone offer cost of living adjustments that other school districts will be able to offer to their employees.

Darrel Taylor, Interim Superintendent

dtaylor@travisusd.k12.ca.us
TEL 707-437-4604

What's New

The Budget Committee members Feedback Stickies (This is the compiled ranking data from each member's feedback form.) No's (Each member was asked to choose 5 items that they definitely did not want cut. This is that compiled data.) May 5, 2005