LAKEPORT—Jacque Eischens, Lakeport Unified School District’s (LUSD) Chief Business Officer, presented the first interim budget report to the LUSD Board at Wednesday’s board meeting. Eischens said, “The District outlook for fiscal stability through 2021-2022 has brightened since the adopted budget, despite declining enrollment”.
Jill Falconer, LUSD Superintendent said that enrollment was down 11 students from last month and added that most of these students moved out of the district. Eichens added that, “We are declining on a larger scale than other districts.” Lost revenue due to chronic absenteeism was also discussed. Rachel Paarsch, Principal of Alternative Education and Pupil Services, said she has been investigating this issue and said that 34% of those chronically absent were Native American students. She believes that busing issues may be playing a part and added she is coming up with a plan to solve the problem. She also said that her team is starting to be able to “identify some of the patterns”. Once patterns are identified, school officials believe solutions can be found.
Eischens explained the reasons behind the district’s positive financial outlook “This is the result of increased carry-over, additional one-time funds in 2019-2020 and the actions of dedicated staff and community members. The budget committee continues meeting regularly as we build a zero-based budget that will align with the 2019-2020 through 2021-2022 fiscal years. The 2022-2023 budget projections are in process to determine fiscal stability at that time and if measures need to be taken in 2020-2021. We don’t want to be surprised as we work on the 2020-2021 original budget and look out to 2022-2023”.
PG&E Power outage’s impact
Eischens also talked about lost meal reimbursement revenue due to the power outages and its resulting negative impact on the budget. “The District is filing an application for meal reimbursement during a disaster. At this time the state has not made a determination for the 2018-2019 claims made after the fires and it will not make a determination for this year until next fall. In October we estimate $14,000 dollars in lost revenue for free, reduced and paid meals combined.” Eischens added that these issues result in larger contributions from the general funds in order to make up for the deficit in cafeteria funds.
In other matters discussed at the board meeting, Falconer announced that summer school will be held for the first time in three years. She also mentioned that the State Dashboard will be released to the public this week. According to the California State website, “The Dashboard contains reports that display the performance of local educational agencies (LEAs), schools, and student groups on a set of state and local measures to assist in identifying strengths, challenges, and areas in need of improvement”.
Also in other matters, Dan Buffalo was unanimously re-elected as board president and Phil Kirby was unanimously re-elected as board clerk. Kirby explained that the board clerk’s role is to address communications to the public and act as president if the president is absent. Board meeting dates were also solidified through December 2020.
Prior to joining the Record-Bee as a freelancer covering education and local news items, Mary Phillips worked in education as a teacher and an administrator for 34 years.
