Superintendent Austin Beutner Streamlines Budget Process for Schools (12-3-19)

Superintendent Austin Beutner released the following statement during the regular Board of Education meeting on Tuesday:

In our continuing efforts to simplify a complex system and restore schools as the center of our work, we are taking several steps to improve the budget process. This will allow school leaders to have more time to share information with their school communities and make choices about where to invest funds to best help students.

Specifically, Los Angeles Unified will: 

1. Provide school leaders with their total available dollars, from all sources, about a month earlier than in previous years, effectively doubling the amount of time to develop their school budgets.
2. Provide school leaders with forecasted enrollment information for the next school year a month earlier than prior years.
3. Allow school leaders to incorporate up to 50% of their school’s unspent funds from the 2019-20 school year into their budgets for 2020-21. Previously, the unspent funds were not made available until September of the following school year, delaying the investment of the funds at the school.

Collectively, these steps will allow school leaders more time to engage with the communities they serve on school budgets. In addition, this will provide schools with more time to plan for staffing.