OXNARD : Schools Prepare for Larger Classes

Classes will be as large as the law allows next school year in the Oxnard Elementary School District under terms of a proposed $57.6-million budget that district trustees reviewed last week.

School officials said the strategy is needed in case student enrollment continues to decline. A drop this year has led to smaller classes but a loss of state funds.

The budget, which includes a $1.8-million transfer from the district’s reserve fund, contains no significant reductions and pays for the opening of the district’s newest campus, the Emilie Ritchen School in northwest Oxnard.

The use of reserve funds leaves the district with just $2.5 million remaining in the fund.

For the first time in more than a decade, student enrollment slipped this school year at the district’s 12 grade schools and two intermediate schools, said Sandra Herrera, assistant superintendent for finances.

“As the year progressed, the children evaporated,” Herrera said. “We’re surmising that, because it costs more dollars to live in Ventura County, the unemployed could not remain here and left.”

Actual enrollment at the beginning of the school year nearly matched the district’s estimates, but as the semester went on, nearly 300 of the district’s 12,200 students left school, Herrera said.

The decline translated into a $250,000 loss in state revenues, because funding formulas are based on enrollment, Supt. Norman R. Brekke said.

That left the district with more teachers than it needed and less money to pay them, producing a strain on the budget, Brekke said.

As a result, the district has lowered its projections for enrollment in the coming school year, Brekke said. The estimate, which is submitted to state school officials, can easily be amended if necessary, he said.