FALLBROOK: $600,000 in school budget cuts approved

Shuttle service will be eliminated this fall

By TOM PFINGSTEN - Staff Writer | Monday, May 5, 2008 10:37 PM PDT ∞

FALLBROOK ---- Educators approved $600,000 in budget cuts during a 15-minute meeting Monday night in Fallbrook, voting to eliminate a popular shuttle service that runs between campuses near downtown Fallbrook and to cut corners elsewhere.

In addition to the $600,000 in cuts approved Monday night, about $1.8 million in reserves will be used to cover an approximately $2.4 million shortfall.

The Fallbrook Union Elementary School District governing board meeting was remarkably short, with only a handful of items on the agenda and little discussion of the much-publicized elimination of shuttle services.

Finance Director Ray Proctor said the district's deficit is a result of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to cut about $4.4 billion from the state education budget for the new fiscal year.

An update is expected from the governor's office within two weeks, although the budget is not expected to be approved until sometime this summer. The school district is set to approve its budget at a board meeting on June 16.

The most significant cut approved by the school board Monday night was the elimnation of shuttle bus service between schools in Fallbrook beginning this fall, a move that is expected to save the district $260,000 a year.

According to district rules passed in 1995, children who live within 1 1/2 miles of their school are not eligible to ride the bus.

But under the shuttle system, if a family has children in separate schools, the parents may drop both children off at the nearest campus, where the second child could hop on a shuttle bus to his or her campus.

Scrapping the shuttle service wouldn't affect transportation for special education students or families who live farther than 1 1/2 miles from the nearest school, officials said.

About 75 people attended a meeting to discuss the shuttle elimination last month at Maie Ellis Elementary School, one of five campuses where shuttle service will be canceled.

Parents whose children ride the shuttles voiced concern that the cut would make it harder for students to get to school, but officials said they had little choice but to eliminate the program.

While the other cuts approved Monday night are subtle and involve shuffling personnel or trimming school budgets, Proctor said getting rid of the shuttle service was a hard decision, and called the whole package "very modest but painful."

"It wasn't something we wanted to do," he said. "It's been forced on us by the budget cuts at the state."

Jim Whitlock, assistant superintendent of human resources, said the Fallbrook elementary school district's financial situation is considerably better than in other districts, where entire school bus systems are being scrapped and hundreds of layoffs are in the works.

"This district has been financially prudent for decades, and it's times like these when that prudence pays off," Whitlock said. "We're better off than most school districts. At the same time, there are things we'd like to do ... that are on hold now, and that's never good."

As educators across North County speculate on whether California's education budget will rebound next year or continue into a second year of decline, Proctor said the Fallbrook elementary district is "planning for the worst."

"I'm hoping we'll have some positive news at some point, and that we'll have some growth," he said.

That growth is expected to come in the form of more than 100 new students who have enrolled in the district's newly expanded home study program, as well as more students resulting from hundreds of new homes near the district's San Onofre campus.

Even if the district's enrollment climbs during the 2008-09 school year ---- after several years of steep decline ---- next year's financial situation will rest on whether the state approves another round of budget cuts, Proctor said.

"We don't want to be in a position in '09-10 or having to make cuts like we're seeing in other districts," he said.

Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten at (760) 740-3516 or tpfingsten@nctimes.com.

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