Commentary
Preparing school budgets is a monumental task.
Julie Hamill, former trustee on the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District Board, recently recommended a great book on the subject. I’m sure most school trustees in California have heard of it. “Smarter Budgets, Smarter Schools” (2022) is by Nathan Levenson, and it was a great read. Levenson is very candid about the realities that school districts face and is loaded with suggestions on how to not only squeeze more out of the budget, but to improve educational scores as well.
With Los Angeles Unified School District recently required to borrow $500 million for sexual abuse litigation settlements, thanks to Assembly Bill 218 from 2019, budgets are facing even more pressures….