The possibility of larger class sizes, teacher layoffs and furlough days are again threatening Conejo Valley Unified School District.

CVUSD Superintendent Jeff Baarstad said the changes for the 2012-13 school year hinge on Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed tax initiative, which will be put before voters in November.

The governor’s plan would raise the state sales tax by half a cent and impose a 1 percent income tax increase for the next five years on individuals who make $250,000 a year or more.

Even if the fall initiative passes, CVUSD will lose about $700,000 because the governor is proposing to eliminate all public school transportation funding. But if it does not pass, the district could lose as much as $7 million in state funding, Baarstad said at the Jan. 24 board meeting.

“For the fifth year in a row, I’m sad to report that we face both a difficult budget future and a very uncertain budget future,” the superintendent said. “When you add in the uncertainty, it makes it so difficult for us to plan and make good decisions in the interests of our kids, our instructional programs and our staff.”

The multimillion-dollar cut is the worst-case and least likely scenario, he reminded the board. “There is a pattern here: What is the worst-case scenario in January (usually) fails to actually materialize,” Baarstad said.

“The governor is putting all the educational eggs in one basket in hope of getting public support for the initiative, (but) it puts us in great peril midyear and forces us to consider decisions that we would not like to make.”

CVUSD has cut more than $22 million from its budget over the last four years, Baarstad said. Many of the cuts were from custodial, clerical and administrative support.

“We’re really not able to run the district on a whole lot less support staff than we already have,” he said. “We could probably come up with about $1 million in little miscellaneous stuff here and there. But after that, the only way you can get to the big dollars is to raise class sizes, which means less teacher jobs and more layoffs.”

Implementing furlough days together with lowering teacher salaries is another option.

“That’s the only way to get to the multimillions of dollars,” Baarstad said.

No additional funding

If approved and enacted immediately, Brown’s tax hike would generate about $4.7 billion for the state after November and $6.9 billion every year until 2017, according to Baarstad.

But the revenue would go toward fixing the state’s projected $10-billion deficit for 2012-13, including helping the state meet its Proposition 98 mandate, which requires that 40 percent of the general fund go toward public education.

“It’s going to subsidize what the state is already paying the schools,” the superintendent said. “Our revenue limit doesn’t change.”

That means “no new dollars would make it into school districts.”

“If the initiative passes, we don’t see a dime,” Baarstad said. “I think most people out there believe that if the initiative passes, education benefits . . . and that is far from the case.”

Instead, he said, districts like CVUSD just suffer less.

The superintendent suggested two early strategies for managing the midyear fallout.

The district could plan to use reserves and create a contingency plan that includes furlough days, Baarstad said.

The plan would “put off any drastic cuts for as long as we possibly can,” he said.

“Or we could bite the bullet, raise class sizes now, implement furlough days . . . assuming the worst-case scenario and then just live with it next year,” he said.

The school board would need to make layoff decisions within the next few weeks to send notices by March 15, Baarstad said. A preemptive staff reduction would be difficult to reverse, he added.

“Let’s just say we lay off 60 teachers and that saves $5 million,” he said. “(We) disrupt all schools and put people out of work, and then (the initiative) passes in November. You can’t put it back together again in November.”

Trustee Tim Stephens called the governor’s plan “deceitful” and “very disappointing.”

“Did he think we were that stupid to try to get something passed realizing we wouldn’t get a nickel out of this tax initiative?” he asked.

Trustee Mike Dunn proposed using $1 million in proceeds from the district’s Avenida de Los Arboles surplus property sale to supplement the general fund.

That may become an option if the tax initiative does not pass and CVUSD is forced to cut more than $7 million, Baarstad said.

“(If) you sell the property once in the lifetime of the district and you don’t build something with that money, then you are throwing it away in one year. But we may not have a choice,” he said.