William S. Hart Union High School District governing board member Bob Jensen said at Wednesday’s meeting that the district’s projected deficit spending isn’t an issue, so long as the district continues to keep a close eye on its fund balance.
The district is projecting to deficit spend for this school year and the two subsequent ones. That is set to bring the district’s ending fund balance, or savings, down from a projected $85.7 million at the end of this school year to roughly $26 million at the end of the 2026-27 school year.
“We do have a balanced budget, and I think that’s important for all of us to understand,” said Jensen, a CPA by trade. “Unlike the federal government that doesn’t have a balanced budget, even though we are chipping away at the fund balance, we do have that fund balance available, and we do balance our budget every year. We obviously just have to be careful on always having a fund balance.”
Jensen’s comments came as the district’s governing board unanimously approved a positive certification for the district’s second interim financial report, letting the state know that the district is set to meet its financial obligations for the foreseeable future.
The district is actually set to have about $5.4 million more available at the end of this school year than initially projected when the budget was adopted last June, but down $2.2 million from when the governing board was last updated on the budget in December. That was due to a previous accounting error related to a statewide allocation decrease for the learning recovery emergency block grant, according to Jon Carrino, assistant superintendent of business services.
One of the big changes since the budget was initially adopted, Carrino said, was the district finding a greater number of unduplicated students, or those who are either foster youth, low-income or English learners. The unduplicated count has risen from 5,661 when the budget was adopted to 6,717, representing around 32% of the district’s total enrollment.
But because the state uses a three-year average for that percentage when looking at a district’s supplemental funding, the number is actually at 29.46% for this budget cycle, Carrino said.
“So, although we’re making strides, we’re not going to see those (numbers rise) for subsequent years,” Carrino said. “But our goal is to increase that even more, and we do have a continued focus on identifying those unduplicated pupils and also an increase in attendance.”
The district is set to receive approximately $2.5 million more in supplemental funding via that unduplicated percentage in the 2026-27 school year than initially projected, according to Carrino. Average daily attendance is also on the rise, from 19,158 at budget adoption to 19,499 at the second interim report, which covers the period ending Jan. 31.
Also of note was Carrino giving a brief overview of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2025-26 budget proposal. He said the projected cost-of-living adjustment is set to be lower than initially thought for the next school year, from 2.93% to 2.43%, but that it is set to rise to 3.52% in the 2026-27 school year. There has been some talk of the cost-of-living adjustment going down even more for next year, he added.
A discretionary block grant that would provide one-time funding to school districts based on attendance is also in the governor’s proposal, and would provide roughly $6.3 million to the Hart district, Carrino said.
“It’s very similar to the learning recovery emergency block grant,” Carrino said. “A lot of people are calling it kind of like an extension of that, very similar in its intended uses. It’s pretty broad, but really its focus is on recovering from the learning loss from the COVID years.”
However, due to the devastating wildfires that plagued Los Angeles County in January, the tax deadline has been pushed back from April 15 to Oct. 15, and that makes it tougher to know how much money the state will have, Carrino said.
“Overall, the budget proposal is positive,” Carrino said. “There are some concerns with the extended tax deadlines due to the fires. That’s going to put us in a situation as we were in recent years, where the state really won’t know their total income until we’re well into the next fiscal year. So, we’ll see if there’s any mid-year adjustments or deferrals based on that.”
