Robert Golton, Palo Alto Unified School District’s Business Officer, is attending a meeting tonight to investigate the details of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent budget proposal and will report on it at tonight’s Board of Education meeting.

The Palo Alto community is showing skepticism towards the governor’s new proposal for educational funding cuts that may impact Paly and the district.

The proposed education funding cuts, approximately 10 percent of the current state education budget, face strong opposition because the state legislature has mandated a constitutional funding guarantee for K-12 education. Any cuts to education funding would require the legislature to overturn the constitutional guarantee. The governor proposed funding cuts throughout California, including $4.4 billion in education and school funding cuts that could influence the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD).

The funding cuts may not affect PAUSD as harshly as other California school districts. According to Board of Education member Melissa Baten Caswell, “Our [PAUSD’s] Chief Business Officer [Robert Golton] is watching closely.” Caswell also said “We are [PAUSD] a Basic Aid district and our funding model is different than most of the districts in California.” In order to know how the district will be affected the board needs to look more closely at the proposal.

Golton says, “At this point, we have only broad statements on the governor’s budget for education. We have heard about some important reductions, but do not know all of them or the details on most of them.”

According to Golton the school board is not exactly sure how this proposal will affect the district because there is not enough detailed information known about the proposal to make a final decision.

Schwarzenegger’s proposal, if passed, would not just affect the schools of California, but also health care and criminal justice programs. Total cuts of $14.5 billion are based on the projected state budget deficit through next year.

Other school districts express concern about funding for before-school and after-school programs and class size reduction. At the college and university level the cuts could mean large fee increases and the potential to cut out 52,000 students from the community college system, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

“We will be attending a meeting in Sacramento on Tuesday, will get some of the details regarding our funding, and will do a presentation at the Board of Education on Tuesday,” Golton said. “However, any decisions about the program in Palo Alto Unified, in general, and Paly, in particular, will require first a detailed analysis of that Governor’s budget and then deliberations that will be done in a very thoughtful manner.”

To follow up this story in more detail attend tonight’s School board meeting at 25 Churchill, which are open to the public.