School Climate & Safety

Calif. Energy Crisis Predicted To Sap Budgets

By Mark Stricherz — January 31, 2001 2 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Voicing growing dismay, California school officials said last week that the state’s power crisis will quickly drain districts’ pocketbooks.

The worsening electricity crunch is expected to last months and prove costly to consumers, experts say. In addition, some state school officials are worried that their local counterparts may be overlooking the problem’s magnitude.

State officials sounded one note of alarm after a seminar held last week in Sacramento by the California Department of Education to provide information about the crisis to Northern California districts. Tony Hesch, a field representative for the agency, said the 140 participants in attendance were surprisingly uninformed.

“There was an awful lot of disbelief from the audience,” Mr. Hesch said. “I think by the time it ended, there was a feeling that this was a situation that needed to be ended right now.”

California’s energy woes stem largely from a 1996 decision by the state to partially deregulate its market for electricity. Designed mainly to cut consumers’ electric bills, deregulation has instead translated this year and last into “rolling blackouts” and higher utility costs. (“California Schools Lose Power as Energy Crisis Deepens,” Jan. 24, 2001.)

Mr. Hesch fretted that those who missed the Jan. 23 event in Sacramento were likely to misread the energy crisis.

“There are still a lot of people who believe this is a manufactured crisis and not a distribution problem,” Mr. Hesch said. “The reality is, this problem has gotten worse significantly.”

To educate district officials, Mr. Hesch and others offered tips on how to conserve energy. Their suggestions included turning off lights when classrooms are not in use, consolidating activities during weekends and at night in one room, and devising a plan to cut energy costs.

Request for Exemption

A few days earlier, a California group representing district financial officers said the cost of the energy crunch would be “extraordinary.” The group had sent a survey by e-mail to the state’s 1,000 districts; 225 responded.

Kevin Gordon, the executive director of the California Association of School Business Officials, said districts would likely need an extra $150 million to $200 million this school year to cover mushrooming natural gas and electricity bills.

“That’s incredible,” Mr. Gordon said. “It’s just a very, very large utility bill.”

He said 40 percent of the districts that responded to the survey indicated that they had already run through their budget reserves for the school year.

“That means that either these are extraordinary bills or there are other costs eating up their reserves,” Mr. Gordon said. His group has petitioned the state legislature to pay for the expected higher costs.

As of late last week, California school officials seemed pessimistic about the prospects for quick relief.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin sent a letter Jan. 19 to the state Public Utilities Commission asking that schools be exempted from rolling electrical blackouts or energy rationing. But a spokesman for Ms. Eastin said there’s little hope.

A spokesman for the utilities commission said officials were still examining the request.

A version of this article appeared in the January 31, 2001 edition of Education Week as Calif. Energy Crisis Predicted To Sap Budgets

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Personalized Learning Webinar
Expanding Teacher Impact: Scaling Personalized Learning Across Districts
Explore personalized learning strategies that transform classrooms and empower educators.
Content provided by DreamBox Learning
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Classroom Technology Webinar
How to Leverage Virtual Learning: Preparing Students for the Future
Hear from an expert panel how best to leverage virtual learning in your district to achieve your goals.
Content provided by Class
English-Language Learners Webinar AI and English Learners: What Teachers Need to Know
Explore the role of AI in multilingual education and its potential limitations.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School Climate & Safety Opinion School Police Officers Should Do More Than Just Surveil and Control. Here’s How
SROs should be integrated into schools as a means to support students and create a safe, humanizing environment.
H. Richard Milner IV
5 min read
opinion sro school police 80377388 01
Dynamic Graphics/Getty
School Climate & Safety 4 Tips to Keep Students' Misbehavior From Sapping Up Class Time
Students' misbehavior has become one of educators' top concerns. Schools need a more deliberate approach to handle it, an expert says.
6 min read
Image of young students in a classroom
Parker Davis and Alina Lopez, right, talk about words and acts that cause happiness during morning circle in teacher Susannah Young's 2nd grade class at Lincoln Elementary School in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, May 4, 2017. Social-emotional learning has been found in research to have a positive effect on students' behavior, but it's not a quick fix for misbehavior.
Ramin Rahimian for Education Week-File
School Climate & Safety Is Virtual Learning a New Form of Exclusionary Discipline?
Some districts are assigning students to virtual learning as a punishment for misbehavior.
5 min read
High school student working on computer at home.
Getty
School Climate & Safety Opinion How to Reduce Gun Violence? Teachers Share Their Ideas
Schools alone can't banish gun violence, but they can invest in ways to strengthen the community and resist discrimination, which can help.
15 min read
Images shows colorful speech bubbles that say "Q," "&," and "A."
iStock/Getty