JESSE B. GILL Staff Writer
Posted: 01/12/2010 10:37:02 PM PST

REDLANDS – The Redlands Unified School District Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday night to cut $11.68 million from its budget for the 2010-2011 school year.

Faced with disappearing education funding from the State Capitol, the Board of Education was forced to approve the cuts to balance the district budget. The budget cuts represent major cuts to district services.

“To bring forward a recommendation for the third time in two years to cut and slash our budget, I’m beside myself,” said Superintendent Lori Rhodes.

The district has now slashed $27.88 million from its operating budget since the 2007-2008 school year.

And the bleeding will not stop there.

The school district will likely have to cut more money from its budget, depending on how Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new state budget will affect state education funding.

Rhodes said the budget will likely mean the Redlands school district will have to cut between $2 million and $4 million on top of the $11.68 million the Board of Education approved Tuesday.

Every member of the Board of Education expressed anger that the governor’s new budget will continue to force the district to cut services to its students.

“If this board and superintendent were to handle the budget and the money in this district the way the state Legislature and governor does, we’d all be going to jail,” said Board of Education member Ron McPeck.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said his new state budget would protect California school districts from further cuts when he delivered his State of the State address Jan. 7, but Board of Education member Pat Kohlmeier said the governor’s governor’s budget is more about “slight of hand” than helping schools.

“I think it’s a good thing that (Gov. Schwarzenegger) is an actor because his budget presentation was totally a work of fiction,” she said.

Kohlmeier accused the governor of “parsing words,” and “manipulating formulas” to hide the true damage the budget will exact on California schools. Schwarzenegger’s budget would take more than $1.5 billion from the state’s school districts, according to a press release issued by the California School Boards Association.

“In the past, the governor and legislature have manipulated the minimum funding guarantee to lower levels and then claimed to have `protected’ schools by funding them at that new, artificially reduced level,” state school boards resident Frank Pugh said in the press release. “This year, it looks as though nothing has changed.”

Redlands school district officials will not know the exact impact Schwarzenegger’s new budget will have on the district for a few months. But the Board of Education will likely be forced to reduce the district’s school year by a total of five days, restructure its special education program and eliminate its middle school summer school programs to account for the money it will lose as a result of the governor’s new budget.

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