Karen Swett is a former
teacher who says she's crunched the district's budget numbers from
the past eight years. She says the District routinely has
money left over from year to year. This year, she says, there
is at least $10 million of unspent money left over from last
year.
"Most of the money we don't lose. Most of the
money gets rolled over and the kids who, the school sites that
didn't spend it get it back -get it again the next year. But
that doesn't help the kid last year who needed the
services."
Swett says this is not a
one-time occurence,"$10.2 million.
And it was the same for the year before that. The year before
that it was $28 million. One year we had $21 million. I have
these back for seven years."
Gabe Ross with the District says
there may be money in certain parts of the budget, but the money is
unavailable,
"They are our restrictive funds or categorical
funds. Categorical funds are much more
complicated. They come from a different funding sources
that have a specific purpose -that can only be used for
specific purposes and that cannot under any circumstances be used
to balance our budget."
Ross says some funds can be
legally rolled over,"Sometimes school
sites will carry some money over in order to save up for a big
purchase of technology etcetera. But in no circumstance can
these monies be used to balance our budget and prevent the awful
kinds of cuts that we've experienced here over the last
decade."
The District had originally
considered closing eleven schools. It has now lowered that
number to seven.