School Beat: What’s up in 2008 for San Francisco’s Schools

Familiar issues will drive those decisions, though 2008 will bring some unique aspects.

The budget keeps its historic place at the top of the list of things to watch out for. School finance is always a complicated headache given that California spends so little per pupil and what it does spend must travel through a sticky bureaucratic maze of legislated requirements and associated paperwork (ironically resulting in less money going directly to classrooms). The new twist this year is the fallout from the housing market blow-out. Poor lending practices have begun to manifest themselves in record numbers of foreclosures, which reduces revenue for the state, which in turn means less money for all state-funded programs like public education.

The size of the state’s shortfall is as yet unknown of course. Organizations have been told to prepare for a 10% budget reduction. That’s a huge chunk of change and anyone who has been to the SFUSD’s annual budget workshops or has participated in a school site council (the governing body that determines how a school’s budget will be used), will be wincing already at the thought of such big cuts.

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