The Riverside Unified School District (RUSD) Board of Education last week held a public hearing on its proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts July 1.
Nickie Hoff, the district’s director of business services said the district’s general fund expenditures were expected to be about $846 million for the 2026-27 fiscal year, about $29 million more than it expected to bring in.
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Additionally, she said the district would be pulling another $3.8 million from its ending balance to help cover the costs associated with welfare settlements and the district’s new office building, bringing the total deficit to $33.1 million.
Hoff said about half of the district’s expenses would be covered using one-time restricted federal, state and local grant funds.
“The restricted funds should technically go down, because you only get the funds — a majority of the time — one time,” Hoff told the trustees at the June 4 meeting.
The other half, she said, would go to pre-committed expenses like deferred maintenance, technology replacement and start-up costs for the soon-to-be built Ofelia Valdez-Yeager Eastside Elementary School. Hoff said the upcoming fiscal year was expected to be the final year of deficit spending from the district’s unrestricted ending balance funds, with RUSD expected to save more than $1 million next fiscal year.
The district is also expected to receive several contributions from the state once the budget is finalized, including increased cost of living adjustments, special education funding and $32 million in grant funding.
“It’s hard to find the bad news when the state has decided to invest so much in our special education program and to give us one-time dollars,” Hoff said.
However, she said the district was also expecting to continue facing declining enrollment over the next three fiscal cycles, which could result in future staff reductions. Some of those reductions would be offset, Hoff said, if RUSD gains additional special education students, which could require the district to hire several new staff members to accommodate the growth.
“I look forward to the board’s involvement in how we might prioritize spending not only that block grant money, but also the increase in dollars coming from the extra money with special ed, and the extra money for the cost of living adjustment,” Trustee Dale Kinnear said following Hoff’s presentation.
The board is expected to adopt the 2026-27 budget at its June 25 meeting.
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