Budget is an important factor that determines many crucial facets of a facility, like the amount allocated for the majority of our students and where said budget comes from alongside other factors such as the employee retirement program. Such points were the focus of the discussion during the SRVUSD board meeting on Oct. 16, 2024.
The majority of SRVUSD’s funding is distributed from the state of California, which makes up approximately 75%-90% of the total budget. Local funding comes in next at around 7% of the district’s total revenue. This is then followed by federal support which makes up the lowest amount at 2%. However, this money always fluctuates based on a plethora of factors; government officials base money off school attendance, meaning the amount of money allocated isn’t set in stone. But such a system is also likely to cause extreme fluctuation between the amount allocated to different districts.
“When looking at the total general fund revenue per student, San Ramon Valley Unified School District falls to one of the lowest, to the second lowest back in 2022-23 in terms of general fund revenue per student. In Contra Costa County, we remain one of the lowest in the entire state, and this in my humble opinion is one of the challenges for our local control funding model,” expressed Superintendent CJ Cammack.
The Public Employees’ Retirement System and the School Employees Retirement System are other networks closely associated with school funding. Most SRVUSD employees are part of retirement programs that are funded by facilities such as the California state budget and the school district. In a way, the SRVUSD budget is deeply associated with this program, however
“We want all of our employees to benefit from the work and contributions of the pension systems when it is time for them to retire; however, these pension systems have been underfunded and have some unfunded liability, which then projects on the state level that there may be more needs than there are funds,” remarked Cammack.
SRVUSD’s total expenditures are just under $467 million and the bulk of those expenditures are put into various positions such as salaries, employee benefits, supplies and services outlay. However, different percentages of the budget are allocated to different causes; currently 86.5% of all of SRVUSD’s expenditures are focused on its employees.
“Most school districts in the state spend 85% to 90% of their budget on people, and that makes sense from a logical perspective because our job is to serve students and the way we support them is by providing staff that supports the student growth, academically and emotionally,” said Cammack.
