Sylvan leaves county list of districts on budget watch

Enrollment decline not as steep as feared

By Michelle Hatfield
mhatfield@modbee.com

E-Mail

Comments (0)

Text Size:

tool goes here

Sylvan Union School District has been removed from the county's list of five districts receiving conditional approval of their 2009-10 budgets.

The north Modesto school district now has full approval of its budget after officials tallied larger-than- anticipated student enrollment and the associated increase in revenue. Although the district still is experiencing a drop in enrollment, the decline was less than estimated. Most of a district's funding comes from the state based on daily student attendance.

Officials estimated that daily attendance would drop by 260 students, but now believe attendance will dip by 53.

Michelle Hatfield's ExtraCredit Blog

Also, the Sylvan board of trustees committed Tuesday to cutting spending by $2 million each for the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years. Details of what gets cut will be discussed more in the spring.

County officials are satisfied with the financial health of the district, said Don Gatti, assistant superintendent of the Stanislaus County Office of Education. The office oversees the budgets of the county's 25 school districts.

"We've always submitted a balanced budget," Sylvan Union Superintendent John Halverson said. He added that trustees felt the district was misrepresented and the financial issue "overblown."

"We needed to get the right message out there," Halverson said, and officials think they did that when they met with county officials Wednesday.

On the Net: www.sylvanconversations.blogspot.com.

Bee staff writer Michelle Hatfield can be reached at mhatfield@modbee.com or 578-2339.