The Palisades Charter High School Board decided to cut another $116,000 from the school’s $22-million budget, adding to the $1.1 million already eliminated. To meet state deadlines, the board passed a 2009-10 budget on June 9 that called for dipping into its $5.3-million reserve by about $840,000 and cutting consulting services, textbooks, professional development and facilities and technology expenditures, for a total of $1.1 million. The board then asked PaliHi’s Budget and Finance Committee to find an additional $340,000 in savings because it did not want to dip into the $5.3-million reserve by more than $500,000. In response, the committee proposed freezing field trips, cutting back on faculty conferences and reducing instructional materials for a total of $116,000, and the board approved those recommendations at a meeting on June 16, said Chief Business Officer Greg Wood. ’We might be cutting back the extras, but we are not cutting into the staffing,’ Wood told the Palisadian-Post. Unlike the Los Angeles Unified School District, the independent charter school will not have to lay off any teachers or clerical staff. The board also agreed to follow the committee’s suggestion to increase enrollment this fall in order to receive more money from the state. Schools are paid a certain amount per student based on their attendance rate. If PaliHi can increase its average daily attendance (ADA) by 43 students from 2,587 students to 2,630, Wood estimates the school would receive an additional $196,058. PaliHi’s capacity is 2,760 students. Executive Director Amy Dresser-Held told the Post that an increase of 43 students in ADA is not significant enough to have an impact on class size. The combination of cuts and increased enrollment will mean that the school will not have to dip into the reserve by more than $500,000, Wood said. Since the June 9 board meeting, anticipated expenditures were not as high as expected, which resulted in about $28,000 worth of savings. Wood estimates that the school will receive $6,119 per student from the state in 2009-10. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the state’s budget on July 28, but Wood had not yet heard what that means for PaliHi. ’I am not expecting it to be worse than what is budgeted,’ Wood said, noting that the budget was built conservatively. PaliHi’s board decided to increase ADA to generate more revenue for the school last year, and Wood said the administrators’ efforts were successful. The school ended the school year with 32 more students than in the 2007-08 year. Director of Student Services Monica Iannessa said she has admitted more than 900 new students in all grades, including all those on the wait list, but not all of them have accepted their seats. Iannessa is also enrolling residents who recently moved into the area, which adds about 30 students. The school is currently over capacity in projected enrollment, but Iannessa said not all the students accepted will attend and the numbers will also drop throughout the school year.
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