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Just as its balance sheets finally approach equilibrium, Berkeley Unified School District is losing its top numbers cruncher—the man universally credited with helping to erase a $6.5 million deficit and getting the district out of the red for the first time in three years. 

On Wednesday of this week, Deputy Superintendent Eric Smith announced his resignation, effective May 14. Smith cited a family emergency that required him to be with his two young children in San Luis Obispo. “It’s purely personal,” he said. “Basically some events happened in their mother’s life that requires me to be down there with them now.”  

Two of Berkeley’s biggest public entities have now lost their top budget officials this year. In January Paul Navazio resigned as city budget director to relocate to the city of Davis. 

Smith, who joined Berkeley Unified last May, has no job lined up as yet, and plans to work as a consultant until he finds a position on the Central Coast. 

A search for his replacement will begin immediately, said Superintendent Michele Lawrence, who had known for a while that Smith was contemplating resigning. In the meantime, Smith said Director of Fiscal Services Song Bendib will assume more duties and a consultant from the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team will step in to temporally fill the position. 

“It’s a tremendous loss for the district,” said School Board Director Shirley Issel. “When there’s someone capable, it’s noticeable and it makes a huge difference.” 

Smith’s departure comes as Berkeley Unified is fine tuning its 2004-05 budget—expected to be the first balanced budget since 2001. The deputy superintendent said the majority of the work will be completed before his departure, though some revisions might have to be made by his successors based on a May financial report. 

Smith arrived at Berkeley Unified last April to replace consultant Jerry Kurr. The district retained Kurr to lay the groundwork for digging itself out of a financial crisis which was caused, in part, by the collapse of its accounting and management systems. 

Though Smith’s tenure has been short, Superintendent Lawrence credited Smith with saving the district between $2 and $3 million by fine-tuning systems and changing outdated business practices. 

Smith moved to self-insure the district for workers compensation costs and ended the practice of paying insurance premiums for relatives of employees who no longer qualified for coverage, saving a combined $1.8 million a year.  

Among the systems that still need work, Smith said, include tracking employee absences and timesheets for non-salaried workers. 

Lawrence is formulating a list of potential replacements, but said that finding someone with an appropriate skill set will be tough.  

“Eric has some rare talents,” she said. After budget cuts forced the district to eliminate associate superintendents for human resources and curriculum, she gave him responsibility for insurance, liability, facilities and labor negotiations. 

“A school business administrator a specialty job that doesn’t translate easily from the private sector,” Lawrence said. “California finance is so complex and the funding model is so convoluted, especially in Berkeley because of the parcel tax, that you have to be in the system a while to be excellent.” 

Smith, a past president of the California Association of School Business Officials, has spent his entire career in school finance, working his way up from a facilities manager in Modesto to the Deputy Superintendent of Business Services for the San Luis Obispo County Office of Education, the job he held before coming to Berkeley. 

Although they are sad to see him go, school board members and staff supported Smith’s decision. “We always talk about putting kids first, so I’ve got to commend Eric because he’s doing what’s right for his kids,” said School Board President John Selawsky. 

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