95: Oxsana Pajoluk, Candidate for Brentwood School Board

But, you know, one of the things that I'm interested in with you is, you know, you and your husband have a business.

And so you understand budget, you understand live within your means.

And right now, the biggest issue with the school districts is the funding and not knowing the state.

And how does that trickle down to Brentwood and the county and...

Now you have a new superintendent they're going to have to get because Dana's going to the county.

How will you take your experience and address the budget concerns that are coming? Because it seems like every couple of years, Brentwood teachers somehow become underpaid compared to other districts.

So it's like this giant cat and mouse.

We don't have the money, but we need to keep our people.

So what are your thoughts on the budget and kind of this whole thing you never know what it is because the state keeps changing it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's the challenge, right? As I was going to the school board meetings, it's like, we don't actually have a lot of say, you know, when it comes to budget, we can manage like as much as we are given.

Right.

But for Brentwood, like our challenges, I think we're about, you know, compared to the rest of like the neighboring, like Antioch and think okay so they pay um you know by student right by attendance we you know i didn't know that so i found that out in the last year of like going and you know learning about all of this right and so unless you know and so basically um supplemental funds right we don't get a lot of supplemental funds right it's usually for like homeless foster kids and things like that like Brentwood is by and large pretty healthy, right, when it comes to that.

So we're not getting those funds, right? So we're kind of limited in what's coming in, right, per student.

So then like attendance, because it becomes a huge thing, right? Well, our attendance is softening, right? A, because that massive influx that came in post-COVID kind of sustained us during that time.

But now things have stabilized and we're not going to experience much more.

massive growth unless we have another world changing event you know and so we have to kind of we need to look and I think a lot of districts need to look at this and I know there's this back and forth with the California Teachers Association and the Newsom administration about funding do we need to fund it like this can the funds come different right so like with Brentwood right there's a huge challenge right there there was a budget blunder right and Brentwood's going to be in all districts I think across that are going to be losing like pretty significant they're screwed Yeah, for the next, you know, two years, four years, I think they're estimating $2 million a year, right? Like we're going to be getting cuts.

Brownwood has been able to like sustain their budget, right? And there's like a three, 4%, you know, threshold that you want to be at.

And so we're going to start dipping into that, right? So we're like, we're at a pivot, right? Where there's like a change that needs to happen, you know? And so finances are going to be a huge conversation, right? There's this conversation about Prop 3 that's, you know, also that impacts school funding directly, right? California's at this point, nobody wants to pay any more taxes.

Like people are just so done, like everybody is.

And so it's like, you know, there's going to be massive cuts.

That's all I'm going to say.

And it's something the school district isn't going to be able to, like, control.

It's coming from the state level.