Governor approves budget

by Dennis Meyers, Assistant Executive Director, Governmental Relations

Gov. Jerry Brown signed the 2013-14 State Budget into law on June 27, just in time for the new fiscal year July 1. He “blue-penciled,” or vetoed, only a few items in the K-12 budget. Those include:

• $30 million from special education appropriated for equalization. In his signing message, the governor said total equalization for special education would cost $300 million, which would reduce what’s available in the future to pay off deferrals and implement the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF).

• $5 million from preschool education to conform to the number of preschool slots he proposed with the one-time $25 million augmentation in the budget.
• $225,000 from the California Department of Education budget for a report on universal preschool he said the state doesn’t need since it doesn’t have the money to support universal preschool.
• $225,000 from the CDE in one-time federal funds that was appropriated for translating parent notice templates.

In addition, the governor commented on three augmentations, or increases, contained in the budget. He noted that $10 million budgeted for the California Collaborative on Education Excellence would stand with the understanding that its formation and purpose has to still be defined. This is the entity that is being created to assist schools with implementation of the LCFF, especially in providing assistance to schools that need help on the academic performance side.

The governor also commented on funding provided in the budget for Special Secondary Programs and Agricultural Career Tech. He noted that these items were pulled out of LCFF by the Legislature and said he is directing his administration to examine whether or not the programs should remain as stand-alone programs.

The governor signed some trailer bills, but not all. His office hasn’t released information as of this writing about which ones were signed just yet; they are looking through them to see if there are conflicting provisions between the various bills.

Here is the link to the governor’s announcement on the budget: http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/FullBudgetSummary.pdf