Meeting Takes on Transportation, Budget Woes at Pali High

By CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA | Reporter

As students and parents are still speaking out on the challenges of transportation, Palisades Charter High School is also focused on covering a more than $900,000 deficit from the last school year.

At an emotional special meeting on Oct. 4, students who travel to the school by bus pleaded for help, asking the board to find a solution that would make transportation more affordable, telling their stories and reasons for wanting to attend Pali High over their local school.

The Board of Trustees did not discuss the issue directly, but did provide an outlook on the future of transportation with the discussion of their main agenda item: It won’t be getting better any time soon.

Faced with a deficit of approximately $900,000, the board and school finance officials continue their search for more funds to keep the school’s balance sheet in the black.

“If we did nothing basically, and if all the estimates come in as I think they will, our deficit would be $471,000. Over two years, that would be $1.3, almost $1.4 million dollars,” said Greg Woods, the school’s chief business officer.

“So what I’m asking the board for today is a framework to re-adopt the budget for 2018-19 and to approve an amount for how much of that deficit the organization needs to recover.”

Woods projected that certain cuts at the school can be made without affecting the students too much, but specific cuts will be proposed at a later meeting. After the board voted to approve a budget readoption, the matter now goes before the budget and finance meeting to take a closer look at what can be rearranged or cut entirely.

After the departure of several teachers and school employees, Woods said, the school recovered some funds from those salaries and will be looking further into the employee lifetime benefits program.

So again the budget and finance committee will look at these things and say, “It’s too much or it’s too little,’” explained Woods, who projects that if all changes he is proposing are made, it will result in a surplus of $282,000 for the school.

The next board meeting is scheduled for Oct. 16.