Big Bear, CA, February 29, 2012, 3:00pm – Tuesday evening’s Special Board meeting of the Bear Valley Unified School District’s Board of Trustees was scheduled to discuss and vote on the budget recommendations suggested by the Budget Advisory Committee and Superintendent Kurt Madden with a goal of roughly $300k to eliminate from the school budget. Several community members in attendance spoke on behalf of the line item that recommended eliminating the three part-time library clerks at each elementary school. As 5th grader, Esther Lopez suggested, North Shore Elementary librarian Julie Nettlebeck “encourages you to read and everyone wants that, don’t you?” With the District deficient spending one million dollars a year, continued severe budget cuts from Sacramento with more on the way, plans for a Parcel Tax to benefit our schools on the horizon for the voters of Big Bear and the need to find a solution sooner than later, there seems to be more questions than answers at this crossroads. As Board President Randy Putz commented, as cuts get closer and closer to the bone, the cuts are all painful. He continued to state that “we’ve received comments on every item we’ve talked about cutting and if we listen to any one person, we can’t make any cuts, but we have to”. Additional questions arose in regards to a utility use reduction of $60k that would require an adjust to the current year-round school calendar. Board trustee Paul Zamoyta suggested a community meeting be held in regards to getting feedback from parents about changing the school calendar. After much discussion the motion was made by board trustee Dr. Al Waner to reduce the library clerks budget cut from $35k to $12k and to determine how that cut would be put into action with the recommendation being made across all school sites instead of only the three elementary schools. Additional budget cuts agreed upon included a reduction to transportation funding of $100k, a $60k utility reduce reduction, $8k cut to the Student Attendance/Safety Officer position, a $115k reduction in district services, a $10k reduction to the deferred maintenance budget, a $10k cut to the maintenance and operations budget and a $5k reduction in fields maintenance for a total of $320k. As Zamoyta stated, “budget decisions will become more and more painful along the way. This is just $300k – we still have $2.7 million to go”. The next regularly scheduled BVUSD board meeting will held on Wednesday, March 7th at 6:30pm at the District offices on Moonridge Road. Meetings are open to the public.
