Parent representative spot open on the AUSD Budget Advisory Committee
ATASCADERO—The Atascadero Unified School District (AUSD) Board of Trustees met for its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 6, at 4 p.m. Trustee Tracy Ellis-Weit was absent from the meeting, and the live stream did not start until after the Superintendent’s Report and most of the councilmembers’ reports.
Both the Minutes for the June 11 meeting and the Consent Agenda passed unanimously with no items being pulled.
Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Kendyl Darnell addressed the trustees with the informational item Fiscal Year 25/26 Budget Development. Trustee Vy Pierce brought up the fact that there is an opening for a parent representative on the Budget Advisory Committee and asked how parents within the school district could be notified of the fact.
“My idea behind it would be to inform our parent community that this opportunity is available and then also to reach out,” Darnell stated. “We always have specific parents that have been a part of school site councils or ELAC committees who have shown an interest in having these conversations. Reaching out to them directly, seeing if they would like to join or if they have a community member that they know of who would like to be a part of it. But it would be proactive outreach to try to find someone.”
Darnell also brought forth the 24/25 State Adopted Budget Update (45 Day Revise). The state finalized and adopted their budget at the end of June.
“The adopted state budget does not have any material changes that will impact the adopted budget for AUSD,” Darnell said. “The state is going to fund the 1.07 percent COLA. The state-adopted budget does include a June to July deferral. However, this will be a cash flow challenge that can be managed and will not impact our ability to continue with any programs that we have in place. And finally, Proposition 28, the Arts and Music in Schools Funding Guarantee and Funding Accountability Act will remain unchanged. It represents 1 percent of Proposition 98.”
The next item on the agenda was also about Prop 28 and was presented to the trustee board by Assistant Superintendant of Educational Services E.J. Rossi.
“So our first item tonight is a new item,” Rossi said. “It’s for Prop 28, Mrs. Darnell just spoke about, that has an additional requirment that at the end of each fiscal year every school district will bring to their board an annual report.”
The first year of funding was for school year 23/24. Rossi stated that during that year, they spent no money and hired no staff. The annual report requires the district to report three things:
- The number of full-time equivalent employees that were hired specifically for art
- The number of pupils served
- The number of school sites providing art education through Prop 28 funds
“The report is easy but the purpose was hazy this year as the state was eager to get funds out for this, but incredibly slow in getting the accountability and what is allowable for funding,” said Rossi.
Because accountability and what is allowable for funding didn’t show up until May through auditors district-wide, most districts in California didn’t spend any of their Prop 28 funds in the 23/24 year. However each school’s have a three-year window to spend each year’s funds.
“Now that we have the audit requirements, we’ve been working very closely [educational] services with our school sites, with human resources, and our business department on what’s allowable, how we meet the audit guidelines, how we attract and hire additional staff to provide the additional services to our kids,” continued Rossi.
As a district, AUSD applied for a waiver that would allow the use of more than 20 percent of the remaining funds for materials and supplies. Currently 80 percent of the funds are required to be used to hire new staff for the arts in AUSD schools. Rossi said that it is hard to find staff who is certificated or qualified to teach art and also brought up that AUSD is also one of the few districts that maintained music programs throughout elementary schools while others cut them.
The Prop 28 Annual Report was passed unanimously.
The next regularly scheduled AUSD Board of Trustees meeting will be on Tuesday, Aug. 20, at 7 p.m.
