Brighter School Budget Picture for Inglewood

Despite California’s budget crisis, Inglewood school officials say they may get enough state aid after all to cancel the furloughs and pay cuts they ordered for non-classroom employees to avoid teacher layoffs.

The school board will hold a special meeting Wednesday night to discuss the new budget calculations now being put together by the district’s financial director, John Scharf.

“At this point I don’t know how much it is,” Scharf said, referring to additional money the district will be able to spend.

Though he declined to give exact figures, Scharf said he believes there will be enough state aid to cover the cost of rescinding the furloughs and pay cuts. He and fiscal directors from other school districts in Southern California met last week with state education officials to assess the impact on schools of the recent, two-month-long state budget crisis.

In Inglewood, 105 administrative employees, including all school principals, have already been taking unpaid furloughs.

Classified employees, such as clerks, custodians and police officers, were to begin taking the furloughs, which would trim their paychecks by 5% to 6%.