VENTURA : School District Board OKs Reduced Budget
Ventura Unified School District board members have unanimously approved a $57.9-million budget.
The 24-school district’s budget, which was approved Tuesday and is about $2 million less than the current operating budget, will add 17 elementary school teaching positions, eliminate five administrative jobs and downgrade other positions.
No administrators will be laid off, said Georgeanne Brown, district director of budget and finance. “They will be placed in other positions or will have left through attrition.”
On a separate issue, Gayla Pierce, district director of food services, asked that the price of elementary school meals be raised from $1.30 to $1.40, the first increase since 1989, to compensate for a sharp drop in commodities provided by the U. S. Department of Agriculture.
“We’ve always had rather generous amounts of USDA commodities available to us,” Pierce said. “We won’t have the same this coming school year.”
Traditionally, Pierce said, the federal government provides quantities of turkey, chicken, fruit, vegetables, flour and other items to the schools. “Two years ago, we received 411 sacks of flour,” she said. “Next year, we will receive none.”
For upper division schools, Pierce requested an increase in prices of some individual items, such as bags of chips.
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