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Surplus, not a crisis?

Dear State Administrator,

After reviewing the annual budget for the 2005-2006 school year, I perceive that administrators previously and now are missing sound fundamental concepts of budgeting and the decision-making process necessary to remain fiscally sound. As I see it, the budget is composed of two basic revenue streams - the General Fund and the Restricted Fund. The General Fund is for fulfilling the core mission of teaching all students while the Restricted Fund is for the fulfillment of special needs and services.

Within the Restricted Fund there are resources associated with each program, thus giving the educational system the parameters which they must operate under. With this in mind, it is clear that the current fiscal "crisis" we are under has been caused by the mismanagement of the Restricted programs.

You state in the section on adopted budget assumptions, "If the District expends more in a restricted program than it receives in program revenue, the General Fund must cover this encroachment by a contribution of revenue from the Unrestricted to the Restricted portion of the budget." These "categorical and special programs" are currently over budget by $5 million.

This is obviously an issue that needs to be corrected immediately. In your letter you state that you have "no choice at this point than for the District to use another $4 million in the State loan in addition to what was already planned for 2005-06" in order to solve this matter. I disagree. With the restricted funds, you are mandated to spend the money toward specific programs. The mandate is not to arbitrarily spend less or more money based on anyone's judgment. It is implied with any special program or grant that the Vallejo community has determined how much money that they are willing to give to solve the problem. The administrator's role is to fulfill this requirement. If all the needs and services are not being fulfilled even after the full expenditure of funds, then it is the responsibility of the Vallejo community to contribute more funds in order to fix the problem, not the administrators.

We Vallejoans need to urge our state and federal legislators to allocate more grant money to these categorical and special programs; it is not for you nor anyone else to draw from the General Fund to make up for these encroachments. With this in mind your job is clear and the budgetary "crisis" becomes a budgetary surplus. You no longer need to borrow money this year and actually have $1 million extra to allocate toward the core mission.

Mr. Damelio, your goal should be foremost to support the core mission, not to expand the auxiliary ones. At this point the solution is clear, your obligations are clear, and your action should also be clear. Get the auxiliary programs within their budgetary constraints and recognize that you don't have a budgetary problem but rather a management one.

Anna Lapid, Vallejo