Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Rejection of School’s Spending Plan Expected

The spending plan for the recently created Acton-Agua Dulce Unified School District is expected to be rejected today by the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

A letter from the county office is expected to be issued today, stating that the district’s 1993-94 budget is unacceptable. A draft letter was faxed to the district Monday, said Acton-Agua Dulce schools Supt. Tom Brown. Neither district nor county officials would release the details of the letter.

According to Brown, the county education office wants the district to reduce its revenue projection and increase its anticipated expenditures.

The county could also assign a fiscal adviser to oversee the finances of the small district, which on July 1 converted from a K-8 district to a K-12 district. Voters approved the conversion last fall.

The district has 1,700 students enrolled at three campuses.

“We’re going to have to make the income adjustments they’re talking about,” said Brown, who declined to elaborate. “We’re just going to have to see what happens here when we have a bottom line on these expenditures.”

A state law allows the county education office to intervene when a school district’s finances are deemed out of order. Last year, the county assigned a full-time fiscal adviser to the Antelope Valley Union High School District, which was found to have a $14-million deficit.

Maureen Saul, an officer with the county’s financial advisory services department, said a draft budget rejection letter is always supplied to districts before a final version is publicly released.

“We need to make sure we’re understanding the same facts,” she said.

Brown said he disagrees with the county’s assessment of his district’s budget, and that he has found some additional revenue for the district. He said that part of the problem with the district’s budget is that it was submitted July 1, before the state adopted its budget.

“We were submitting it based on the best information we could,” he said.