Governor’s Budget Hits BVUSD Hard: Workshop Set To Discuss Options

Big Bear, Ca, January 24, 2012, 12:00pm – The Bear Valley Unified School District will hold a board workshop meeting tomorrow in the Big Bear Middle School Library.  This meeting will be filled with important discussions and decisions due to the recent release of the budget by Governor Brown, and its devastating impact on the BVUSD budget.   Paul Zamoyta, one of BVUSD’s trustees on the board expressed his frustration on Facebook after the budget was announced stating: “IT ELIMINATES BUS FUNDING! That’s another 800K hit to our school district on top of another 900+K in other non-transportation related cuts. This is all in addition to the 1.3M we still have to cut this year. (Can you imagine what our district would look like without buses? Fewer students will attend school, thus even less money for our district, creating even more of a money problem. And operationally, can you imagine the traffic jam that dropping students off would look like?”  Zamoyta continued to ask for help, saying “this is staggering.”  The meeting will focus on the budget issue, as exploring alternate funding sources is first on the workshop agenda.  Board members will look into the advantages and disadvantages of a General Obligation Bond, Parcel Tax, and technology endowment.  Board members will also look into a possible reconfiguring of schools where one of the elementary schools would house Kindergarten through second grade, and the other two schools would teach 3^rd through 6^th graders.  The meeting will take place at 5:00pm tomorrow night, and the public is encouraged to attend, and may speak during the open hearing section.