By Sara Ballenger

After a tough year for school finances, the Los Altos School District approved a balanced budget for the 2003-04 school year, June 16.

Unlike the layoffs the district had to experience last year the district is actually hiring four teachers and has a four percent reserve rather than the state’s required three percent.

The increase in the parcel tax, which was passed last november with a two-thirds majority vote, had a lot to do with the difference in the financial picture, according to Randy Kenyon, assistant superintendent of business services. The parcel tax will garner about $4.1 million in revenue for the district, Kenyon added.

“We are projecting $32,4 million in revenue and spending $7,950 per student next year,” Kenyon said. “About 82 percent of our funds come from the local community, through property and parcel taxes and the Los Altos Educcational Foundation.

The budget was based on some detailed assumptions, Kenyon said. Those assumptions are as follows: there will be no cost of living increase, no further increase in the parcel tax, after the $333 increase last fall, an average of five teachers will retire from the district each year, a minimal increase in state funding; continued funding at “historic” levels by the Parent Teacher’s Associations, continued funding by the Los Altos Educational Foundation; continued class-size reduction in grades k-3 and the district becoming a Basic Aid District in the 2004-05 school year

Currently, the district is a Revenue Limit District. The state imposed revenue limits or a cap on general fund revenue per student in 1972.

The district’s current revenue limit is based on the amount of funding in 1972 that voters within each school district within the state had authorized in previous tax elections.

About 73 percent of the district’s funding comes from the state according to Kenyon.

Key factors in determining a district’s basic aid status, include how fast property values escalate compared to growth in enrollment and cost-of-living increases from the state.

The district’s Citizen’s Advisory Commitee for Finance projected that the district will qualify as a Basic Aid District in the 2004-05 school year, using the assumption that local property taxes increase 6 percent per year for the next several years, according to the district.

Dick Hansenpflug, chairman of that committee spoke in favor of the district’s budget.

He said that the budget mirrored the first year of the committee’s 6-year finanial plan it recommended to the Board of Trustees last April.