Features

The Berkeley school board will hold a special budget workshop tonight to consider some possible scenarios for reducing a projected $5 million budget shortfall next year. 

At the top of the agenda is the issue of how much the district will spend to hold down class sizes, said Stephen Goldstone, interim superintendent for the Berkeley Unified School District. 

In 1994, Berkeley voters approved the Berkeley Public Schools Educational Excellence Project (BSEP) tax measure, which pulls in millions of dollars each year aimed at holding Berkeley student/teacher ratios at 25-to-1 for fourth through sixth grades and 27-to-1 for grades seven through 12. 

Because of enrollment growth since 1994, however, the BSEP money no longer covers the cost for extra teachers needed to maintain these ratios. In order to meet the ratios next year, the Berkeley school district would have to kick in an estimated $880,000 from its general fund, contributing to the overall budget shortfall for the district. 

Tonight district staff will present the school board with different scenarios for reducing or eliminating this $880,000 expense, carefully explaining each scenario’s impact on student/teacher ratios. 

Goldstone estimates that the district will need four more teachers next year than this year to maintain current ratios.  

If the district were to make no contribution to class size reduction out of the general fund it would have 15 fewer teachers next year than this year, he said. 

Tonight’s workshop is for informational purposes only, Goldstone said. The board is not expected to vote on different budget-cutting scenarios until some time in May. 

The meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Board Meeting Room on the second floor of the district’s administrative offices, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way.