No longer faced with the prospect of making up to $6.9 million in budget cuts, thanks to the passage of Proposition 30 and Measure E in Tuesday’s election, the Davis school board heaved a sigh of relief on Thursday night. Trustees expressed their appreciation to voters for putting the school district in a stronger position financially.

But the board members also reminded themselves that while the immediate crisis of a new round of deeper budget cuts has been averted, they are still dealing with the previous budget reductions of the past four years, which have resulted in the elimination of the equivalent of about 100 full-time positions across the school district. The upshot has been increasing class sizes, and increasing workload for the teachers who remain.

Superintendent Winfred Roberson noted that the average class size has gone from 25 students to 31 students in grades K-3, from 29 students to 34 students in grades 4-6 and from 30-32 students to 37 students in grades 7-12. There are also plenty of classes at the high school level that have 40 or more students. Parents and teachers are commenting that students are getting less individual attention as a result.

The $3.7 million a year that the district will not lose as a result of California voters’ approval of Prop. 30, and the $3.2 million per year in local support that Davis-area voters approved by passing Measure E, will abate the school district’s cash-flow crisis, Roberson said. That will allow the district to maintain the status quo in terms of staffing.

There will be no further discussion of shortening the school year by several days this year, or closing a campus because of budget cuts, Roberson said.

But the approval of Prop. 30 and Measure E will not put the Davis school district in a position to hire more teachers or reduce class sizes right away, he said.

And even though the immediate crisis is past, Roberson and the trustees stressed that the district still needs to evaluate some of the emergency moves that would have been contemplated if the state and local measures had failed, like grade reconfiguration at the district’s campuses, to see if that might be a more efficient way to deliver education to the community’s youths.

“We had been looking at some pretty drastic scenarios” if Prop. 30 and Measure E had failed, noted school board president Susan Lovenburg, who was re-elected Tuesday. “I’m not interested in those drastic scenarios (now), but I am interested in using our resources wisely.”

Considering these possible changes is “still urgent, but it’s not imminent like it was four or five nights ago,” Roberson said.

Roberson noted that the school district is streamlining the process for senior citizen homeowners who claim an exemption from the local taxes. Seniors who already have claimed an exemption under previous parcel taxes will automatically be registered for an exemption under newly approved Measure E, Roberson noted. However, there is an “opt-in” option if a senior changes his mind and decides to pay the parcel tax as others do.

Automatically extending the senior exemption for Measure E “saves us time (in the business office), which saves us money,” noted trustee RIchard Harris, who came up with the plan.

Associate Superintendent Bruce Colby said about 1,000 seniors now claim a parcel tax exemption.

— Reach Jeff Hudson at [email protected] or 530-747-8055.

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