HUNTINGTON BEACH : School District Faces Budget Problems

The Huntington Beach City School District will probably spend $832,000 of its reserves to balance its budget for the current school year, and some deep spending cuts lie ahead if Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposed education spending plan is approved, Interim Supt. Gary Burgner said.

The shortfall is the result of lower-than-projected funding from state and local sources for the 1990-91 school year, combined with some unusually high expenditures, Burgner said.

One of those expenses was a $146,265 payment to former Supt. Diana Peters under her termination agreement. Peters, whose contract was scheduled to run until 1993, resigned last August in exchange for the payment.

In addition, the Huntington Beach district, like all school districts in Orange County, has been required to pay a new fee to the county Department of Education for tax collection. The Huntington Beach district’s fee was $126,000.

This year, income from state and local sources for the district is expected to be $196,000 less than the amount received for 1989-90.

Wilson’s proposal calls for schools’ planned cost-of-living adjustments to be frozen, and for a decrease from $4,168 to $4,076 in the amount per student that the state pays the district.

Because the district in recent years has laid off staff members and made other large spending cuts to balance its budget, there are few options for it to make further reductions, Burgner said.

“It’s a good question,” he said when asked where the district might make cuts. “Maybe we will have to make a longer list of nickel-and-dime things that we can cut. But sometimes those things can be more painful than the other ones.”

Trustees in coming weeks will decide where to make the budget cuts, and those may include layoffs, district officials said.

Burgner added that the district’s gloomy budget picture will put emphasis on the importance of the Budget Building Process, a 5-year-old program devised to help the district more accurately anticipate its spending for the coming year.

Under the process, a representative from each district department proposes a spending plan for the budget year. The representatives then meet as a group to decide on adjustments. Teachers and parents are also involved in the talks.

The board adopted this year’s version of the process last week. Officials said the process has been loosely followed in recent years, but Board President Robert Mann said the district will strictly adhere to the process in preparing the 1991-92 budget.