The mission of budgetsarebaloney.com is
to provide Stakeholders a fresh, accurate, and undeniable perspective
of all 958 California school districts' individual and collective financial positions.
The data for each district is public information from the Department of Education and has been reconfigured to provide a new more comprehensive perspective for stakeholders that highlights the importance of focusing actual numbers, all Governmental Funds, and all district assets rather than the narrow General Fund and rarely accurate budgets and projections.
Adopting this new view will allow school district stakeholders to truly participate in the budget process, to get real answers to their questions, answers that make sense. And get results.
On a broader scope, when analyzed by county and summed for the entire state, it’s obvious, the current school district budget practice is a disgrace. In 2023, the State Total by County clearly shows California public schools were sitting on $88 BILLION Taxpayer dollars. Some will say most of the money is “restricted” or “assigned” or “one-time”.
But that doesn't make sense.
Best practices like spending restricted money first, spending assigned money within a couple of years, and automatically passing COLA along to employees to “keep the pie” proportional seem to be ignored. And the majority of "restricted" or "assigned" money can be unrestricted or reassigned and spent for other needs. Most district's Governmental Funds balance percentage has swelled, double and triple what it was just ten years ago when the Local Control Funding Formula came into play.
Historical actual balances are critical to solving the problems plaguing the state’s public schools. Trust needs to be rebuilt, and like everything, it all starts with the money. The $88 BILLION cushion is real and needs to be accounted for.
Stakeholders, including most school board members, are in the dark. Students and taxpayers deserve better.
Please share the information with as many people as possible, be a good steward for goodness sake.
It will take real heroes to get school districts to spend down those zeros, but it can be done.
Students and taxpayers deserve better,
Michelle
Copyright Michelle A. Boudier, January 2025. All Rights Reserved..