The News is Better for Oak Park District

While other school administrators struggle with painful budget cuts, officials at Oak Park Unified School District have realized they will get more tax dollars than anticipated and should squeak through next school year without the need to cut classroom programs.

Assistant Supt. Stan Mantooth said new funding estimates show the district should receive about $227,000 more than originally expected. Officials said the boost comes from higher-than-expected property tax revenues and should be more than enough to cover an anticipated budget shortfall.

That means the district will not have to reduce workers’ hours, cut back on purchases of textbooks and athletic uniforms--or cancel graduation ceremonies for the Class of 1994.

Those are among the budget cuts Oak Park school officials had said they would implement to make up the projected shortfall. The administration had asked the district’s five schools to prepare budgets reflecting a 40% cut in discretionary funds, which are used to pay for such items as supplies, equipment, paper, teacher conferences and library subscriptions.

Mantooth said the budget-cutting exercise was helpful even if it now appears to be unnecessary.

“Now we’ve gone through that painful process of identifying what we would cut from the budget if we did have to cut back,” Mantooth said.

School board member Robert Kahn said despite the brighter budget picture, spending must still be restrained.

“We’ve got a lot more students, but we have not increased administration at all. We are understaffed,” Kahn said.

The proposed 1993-94 budget of $9.2 million would keep programs at current levels and pay for increased utility costs.

Most teachers will receive 5% salary increases for an additional year’s experience, Mantooth said.

But he said the proposed budget contains no salary increases for administrators or non-teaching staff, such as janitors, clerical workers and groundskeepers.

The district is about to open negotiations with the Oak Park Classified Assn., which represents about 70 non-teaching employees, on a new collective bargaining agreement. The current contract expires June 30.

Mantooth said Oak Park has escaped the budget woes of other school districts because of its explosive growth in student enrollment. The district, Ventura County’s fastest-growing, is expected to have 2,350 students next year, an increase of nearly 11% from this year’s enrollment.

State funding for schools is based on enrollment.

“We’re able to hold our heads above water because of that growth,” Mantooth said.

The anticipated enrollment increase translates to a boost in revenues of more than $1 million from the current year, Mantooth said.

Mantooth warned that the projections are “best case” estimates and assumes that Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature will appropriate the same level of funding for schools as they did last year.