Finances | Srvexpositor Com

SRVUSD FINANCES

SRVUSD is now planning a huge $750 Million Bond measure for the November 2026 election. Some of the problems with this measure are summarized in the picture below. The District plans to extract $60 Million per year in new project spending if the measure passes. We will be interested to hear details of that spending — the projects, the unit costs and labor costs built in to those projects.

The core of SRVUSD's ongoing claims of money problems is the disproportion between their compensation (pay and benefits) and the combined effect of enrollment changes and inflation.

The high point of District enrollment was the 2017-18 school year, with 32,504 students. The student count in 2026-27 is projected at 27,236. That represents a loss of 5,268 students, = 16.2% of 2017-18's enrollment. But during 2026-27, the Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) count will have diminished only 7.7%.

SRVUSD did act on February 24th to lay off 53 FTE positions for 2026-27. Last hired, first fired rules applied, not employee quality — a warped requirement driven by union control of education. But a same-
percentage FTE employee decrease in 2026-27 would be 451 fewer than in 2017-18.

Be sure to visit the Personnel page also. SRVUSD's claimed financial problems are of their own making. Employee numbers and compensation increases have both been grossly disproportionate with the combined effects of inflation (increases yes, but...), accompanied since 2017-18 by severely declining enrollment.

And for the 2026-2027 school year, SRVUSD expects to have 5,376 fewer students than they had in 2017-2018, the high point in student enrollment. Their employee numbers have dropped meanwhile, but that decrease (7.7%)
is nowhere near the enrollment drop since then (16.5%).

Current projections show that disproportion continuing to worsen over time.

We've heard that some SRVUSD teachers have been complaining that their compensation has [allegedly] not kept pace with inflation since 2019. But the reality is summarized below. Note that raises have been retroactive to the previous July, and that in addition to the raises with asterisks, "one-time" 1% amounts were also supplied.

Essentially: SRVUSD's out-of-proportion compensation increases over time have themselves become a local inflationary effect.

Nevertheless, SRVUSD tax promoters were able to convince enough voters in a second go-round on 2024's parcel-tax renewal campaign (Measure Q) — despite an 8.5 % retroactive raise in late 2022 and another 6.0% raise in February 2024 (both with an extra 1% "one-time" bonus addition — that they've been able to continue the existing parcel tax (netting about $7 Million annually).

The District itself spent over $300,000 in taxpayer funds for campaign consultants and promotional mailings in pushing (a) failed measures E and F (with E including a sneaky inflation escalator clause, F a straight up addition) and (b) Measure Q's simple renewal.

The failed Measure E & F SPECIAL election in May of 2024 cost them over $1.1 Million in County Election Office expenses for mailing and processing the ballots involved. Their Measure Q Election cost (their second parcel-tax renewal attempt, this time without a sneaky inflation escalator or a flat increase) was much less, a little under $188,000. That was because they consolidated that election effort with the November 2024 General Election.

In addition to SRVUSD's own election maneuvering, their tax-exempt PTAs and some of their existing and/or prospective vendors of goods and services contributed significant sums to their "private" 2024 parcel-tax campaigns. See the table below. The numbers shown are believed to be accurate, based on Election Office posted records.

Realize what this means: tax-exempt entities spent large sums to add nine more years of parcel taxes. The National PTA (see further below) is thoroughly involved, along with radical extremists of the NEA, in radicalizing the schools. We suspect that at least some of SRVUSD's own PTA organizations are part of that same effort here.

And to us, the additional contributions by SRVUSD vendors smell like shakedowns and (at least potential) kickbacks, though direct quid pro quo connections are difficult or impossible to establish.

Parent Teacher Association (PTA) groups are generally regarded as benign organizations which work to support and improve schools and the education those schools are delegated by parents to provide. But many of the local PTAs are closer in philosophy and practice to the outlook and left-wing activity of the National PTA.

In 2002 (in The Politics of the PTA), researcher Charlene Haar exposed the National PTA's close association with the radical NEA teacher union, and PTA's own direct promotion of the radical fringes of school programming.

But things have worsened considerably in schools since then. So now, the group Defending Education has published its own comprehensive investigation of PTA activism in schools across the country, "The hyper-politicization and ideological takeover of the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA)."

While parents and other taxpayers are awakening to the harms of "DEI" programs in schools, the PTA is accelerating its “integration of an equity lens into all aspects of the association’s work.” PTA is determined to “develop critical consciousness by recognizing racism, classism, and other issues in the world.”

Defending Education takes reports on school misbehavior and educational malpractice -- and publishes them as "incident reports." They have a page showing a few of the many such abuses in which SRVUSD is involved.