Budget Deficit Looms for School District

The Simi Valley Unified School District could face a budget deficit of more than $2.1 million for the current fiscal year, a shortfall caused in part by partaking in the state initiative to reduce class sizes, officials said Wednesday.

At a meeting of district officials and school board trustees, Assistant Supt. David M. Kanthak said that hiring more teachers and modifying school buildings--measures taken as part of the initiative to shrink primary grade classes to 20 or fewer students--account for about $850,000 of the projected deficit.

The remainder is the result of numerous expenses, including the district’s relocation of ninth-grade classes to Simi Valley High School and Royal High School, Kanthak said. The school district’s budget for this year is about $91 million, he said.

But school district officials and trustees said they hope that Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature will increase funding for the popular class-size reduction program. The school district received $650 per student for the initiative this year, Kanthak said.

Kanthak called the budget a “moving target,” given the uncertainty of additional state funding.

Schools Supt. Tate Parker said that regardless of what happens with state funding for class size reduction, there appears to be consensus on two top priorities for the next fiscal year: providing sufficient funding for Santa Susana High, a magnet school for the technology and performing arts that opened last fall; and modernizing many of the district’s aging schools.

“If we want [Santa Susana] to succeed, it needs support,” Parker said. “If we fail to do that, we can probably anticipate that the school is going to fail.”

School officials are scheduled to adopt a budget for fiscal 1997-98 this summer.