In a candid report to the Conejo Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) board in June, Victor Hayek, CVUSD deputy superintendent of business services, warned, “There is a fiscal cliff we face moving forward.”
He said that average daily attendance (ADA) “will be down almost 2,000 students” in CVUSD schools due in part to the calculation model adopted during the state government’s response to COVID. The loss of students — heading quickly below 15,000 — is having a staggering financial impact.
“We are eating our balance moving forward.” — Victor Hayek, deputy superintendent
“At roughly $10,000 per student, you can imagine how significant of a blow that is when we are looking at future funding,” Hayek told the board.
Already, the district functions at an annual deficit of $7 to $8 million.
“We allocate dollars based on enrollment. As enrollment declines, [schools] get less dollars,” Hayek said.
Superintendent Mark McLaughlin, who has presided over CVUSD’s declining enrollment while pushing homosexuality and gender dysphoria in K-12 classrooms, acknowledged that “we are facing a very similar cliff” as other school districts in California, which parents are similarly abandoning.
Salary and pension costs also weigh heavily on the budget, said Hayek, as they take up a whopping 84 percent of CVUSD’s annual expenditures.
“Eighty-four cents of every dollar we spend goes towards people [staff and teachers],” Hayek said.
But with CVUSD’s decline in virtually every meaningful metric and the bottoming-out of the budget, Hayek’s conclusion was simple: “We are eating our balance moving forward. … We have to hope they [the governor and state legislature] restore those one-time funds. I don’t know how much we are going to see.”
“We are facing … a cliff.” — Mark McLaughlin, superintendent
He noted that local financial control of public education is largely a myth, and only “a small percent [of CVUSD funding] comes from local dollars.” That leaves local public schools at the mercy of state and federal funding.
“The federal and state, you see declines here, significant decreases,” Hayek said. “That’s mainly because of the stimulus funds that are going away.”
The only positive metric mentioned in the meeting: a minor increase in the number of CVUSD’s Facebook followers was seen.
Videos of all CVUSD board meetings are available online at conejousd.org under the Board of Education tab.
This was inevitable the minute McLaughlin and the school board members made the decision to put political ideology ahead of children, parents, family values, and traditional education. I applaud the brave parents who chose to remove their children from our failing school district. CVUSD had a responsibility to protect and educate the children of this community. Instead, they introduced them to age inappropriate sexual material, encouraged gender confusion, and promoted racial division. They chose indoctrination over education. Perhaps the most egregious act, was their attempt to destroy the trust and honest communication between children and their parents. There are only two components to resolve the attendance and financial issues facing the District. First, remove all political social agendas from the curriculum. This might allow parents to more willingly entrust their precious children into the hands of the District. The second component would be to reduce the unnecessarily bloated administrative staffing and reconsider the obscene salaries being paid to upper level administrators. Last year, parents tried repeatedly to communicate their concerns to the District and the Board. CVUSD is now paying the price for ignoring those voices.
Thank you Karen! That’s why I voted for you last for the school board in my district.
Ditto what Karen Meyer wrote.
Karen Meyer speaks for many concerned parent’s and grandparents. School is for education of basics and most children and testing well below their grade level. Stop the political ideology, start teaching students to read and write etc.
Triple ditto!! Well said!
Absitively! You have these sick child predators pretending to be educators and wth do u expect! You can 100 pct guarantee that when Marky Mark is investigated there will b enough material found to put that psychosexual hater in a cell even more secure than Epstein’s. That’s right Mark, you bigot. You r a child predator and u will not escape prison time.
This is CVUSD ADA totals below:
2019-20 2020-21 2021-22 2022-23
17615 17615 15706 15083
LCFF FUNDING PER DISTRICT UNAUDITED ACTUALS REPORT
2019-20 2020-21 2021-22 2022-23
163.M 163M 172M 195M
0 8M 23M Increase
This District received ADA 17118 funding for 2022-23, while
losing 2035 ADA students (17118-15083=) @$12,600 per ADA Student
(190M/15083). So 2035 lost ADA x $12,600 per ADA student = 25.641M.
So this district should have lost 25.641M in LCFF Funding, yet gained
19M from the State Aid, 4M in Property Taxes, total 23M, while losing
2035 student. Of course, they spent this money on higher salaries, pensions,
hiring Admin, teachers and Managers. No wonder the Fiscal Manager
stated in paper they are going off a Fiscal Cliff. 2022-23, Certified Salaries
up 14% (14M), Classified up 22% (7M), STRS up 35% (6M), PRS up 70%
(4M), Healthcare 32% (6M), Books and Supplies 202% (17M), Outside
Services 52% (12M). 68M increase in expenditures while losing 2035.
Less students, need a bigger staff, administrators, mgmt, teachers, massive raises,
pensions, health care, books, supplies, outside services. Mismanagement
of taxpayers’ dollars continue unabated, school board, superintendent,
fiscal director responsible, not accountable to this community. Keep
electing all Union Boards, in bed with Unions, this is the results.