Question:
At the end of last year we reconfigured the school grade levels to deal with overcrowding. The student body account is now the issue. There is money left over in the account and we moved students to two other schools. The question is how to move the money?Response:
There is not a specific Education Code or other statute that dictates what needs to be done if a reconfiguration happens within the same school district. There is an Education Code that specifies what is to happen when a school district reorganizes, which we’ve listed here for your information. Education Code section 35564, "Property, Funds and Obligations of Student Body" states:"If the reorganization of a school district under this chapter results in the relocation of district boundaries so that a portion of the pupils will not be residents of the district thereafter maintaining a school previously attended by the pupils, and if there is in the school an organized student body, the property, funds, and obligations of the student body shall be divided as determined by the county committee, except that the share shall not exceed an amount equal to the ratio which the number of pupils leaving the school bears to the total number of pupils enrolled. The ownership of the property, funds, and obligations, which is the proportionate share of each segment of the student body, shall be transferred to the student body of the school or schools in which the pupils are enrolled after the reorganization. Funds from devises, bequests, or gifts made to the organized student body of a school shall remain the property of the organized student body of that school and shall not be divided."
In your case, though, if there is no specific board policy the funds would normally stay at the school they were raised at. Remember that fund-raising is not to be tracked by student, so there is really no way to know just how much to move to the new school where the students are now located. If your district wants to come up with board policy or direction on this issue, they could do so, but there is no provision in the code or law to guide the decision or to authorize it to happen.
10/3/07
