Budget passes - Adult ed does not get restored

The school board passed the budget on June 16, 2010 without giving adult ed. back anything. They did repeatedly state that this could all still change and they're doing it because they have to. They congratulated themselves on reinstating many of the things that had been cut at one time like some of the counselors and librarians and the art and the music programs. They were also happy that they didn't have to lay off many of the teachers (rumor seems to have it that most K-12 teachers that were laid off got or are getting reinstated) or increase class sizes like they had originally anticipated. This part was infuriating for me.

They breezed over the adult ed part and even presented that we have $774,801 which "does not account for fee increases". (This is misleading as we have roughly $180,000 from federal money and a projected $580,000 from fees - which is a higher fee number than the roughly $350,000 we collected in fees last year. Most of that money is restricted in terms of where it can go and very little can actually go to pay teachers).

Various trustees talked about giving money back but none mentioned adult ed while some did mention a librarian who needed another 0.1 FTE which would cost the district $10,000. It was extremely disappointing to see how much they have forgotten adult ed and how much money they have taken from our budget (~1.4 million) to pay for K-12 things.

There is still talk that at some point, when the state passes its budget (maybe July but probably August or September or even later), that then there will be talk of restoring funds. That seems to me to be too late as our school will have already devised a program without these funds. Either way, the board does not seem to be inclined to give money back to adult ed. as various trustees talked about restoring funds but, while not mentioning adult ed, they did mention other programs or parts.

So where are we?
The parent ed program will have two co-ops. One (Beach Flats) is funded by a county grant and the other (Westside) is funded by fees. Three more are having to come up with all (or most) of their own money. The parent ed teachers have banded together and formed committees to write grants and to fund raise. They are raising their fees so that they can cover their costs.

The GED/HS program I think will survive for maybe 20 hours a week which will be funded by the federal dollars.

The ESL program is still up in the air. As far as I know we have about $80,000 which will pay for maybe 3 classes in the am and 3 in the pm and some combination of days and hours. I'm not sure where we are at in terms of what we will offer and when. There will be the lengthy process of offering assignments by seniority which probably won't start until July.