Misreading the LAUSD Budget?

When the LAUSD provided funding formulas to the schools for 2014-15, the Porter Ranch Community School was alarmed to learn that it was only receiving one tenth of the budget that the district had led them to believe they would be receiving by becoming a pilot school. The Porter Ranch neighborhood council organized a meeting around this subject and invited officials from several government agencies to help educate the public and propose solutions. At this meeting, one of the council members asked Tamar Galatzan, the School Board member representing the area, how the school was supposed to operate on a budget of $26,000 (the actual number being presented was $24,900) a year. Ms. Galatzan did not correct this assertion and blamed the state’s new funding formula and claimed that the money was being diverted to Title I schools.

Last week the budget numbers were released by the district revealing the fact that the $24,900 was just one line item in the school’s budget. The district is actually providing a total of $5,215,042 to the school. Despite Ms. Galatzan’s assertion that schools in our part of the district are in a position where they have to hold “a fundraiser in order to buy toilet paper,” the budget actually provides $7,213 to buy “custodial supplies.”

As a board member, I am sure that Ms. Galatzan had access to the specifics of this budget before the general public. Members of her staff were also present at the meeting and she stated that they have spent a considerable amount of time on this issue. Yet, nobody understood the issue well enough to correct the public’s incorrect assumption that the $24,900 was all the funds that would be provided to the school.

Misunderstandings like this one are understandable when a board member without training in accounting has to review a $4.6 billion budget. After all, the spreadsheet detailing the budgets for the individual schools covers 1,092 pages! This is just more proof that the district is too large to efficiently manage.

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I am running for the District 3 seat on the LAUSD School Board. For additional information about my campaign, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com.