California has more money than projected after admin miscalculated state budget

Posted by littlexsparkee 3 hours ago

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Comment by codethief 1 hour ago

Related: In the German state of Baden-Württemberg they were miscalculating the number of active teachers for 20 years due to a software error, causing the state to employ 1440 fewer teachers than actually intended.

https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bildung/baden-wuerttemberg-s...

Comment by NewJazz 1 hour ago

How is that related? That's a long term calculation error vs short term forecasting error.

Comment by RobRivera 48 minutes ago

From my point of view, the Jedi are a state-funded militia coded as a tax exempt non profit!

Comment by sgc 1 hour ago

Given that school budgets are absolutely gutted with mass layoffs this year and next, and the miscalculation looks like 2/3 of the budget shortfall, hiding such a basic and impactful error requires a much better explanation than I see in that article. It looks like it was done to stifle debate about budget allocations, which would be necessary in the circumstances.

Comment by oatmeal1 1 hour ago

The education system seems one of the only places where vastly improving technology over the past 30 years has not translated to cost savings or improved outcomes.

Comment by aaomidi 55 minutes ago

Why would we expect schooling to get…cheaper?

The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 37 minutes ago

> vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers

My 1,500-student public California high school currently lists 7 administration-team members (principal, executive assistant, three assistant principals, school-facilities manager and food-services manager) and 11 administrative-support members (school data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior-clerical assistant, separate registrar and attendance roles, interventions-support specialist, and others). That doesn't include 4 site maintenance, a network-support and a separate network-systems specialists; a separate media-library specialist; 2 psychologists; a college and career advisor; 4 school counselors; a wellness-space support specialist; and a social science and an athletic director.

34 administrative hires. One per 44 students. Many of those roles strike me as fluff.

Comment by aiiane 30 minutes ago

Which of those roles specifically would you say are fluff?

Comment by JumpCrisscross 25 minutes ago

> Which of those roles specifically would you say are fluff?

Food-services manager (it's all oursourced to Aramark), data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior clerical assistant, one of registrar or attendance, two of site maintenance, one of the network specialists (probably both–one across the district is plenty), and probably at least one of the counselors and the separate social science & athletics person, who should just be one of the physical education teachers. That's about ten people, or a million dollars–minimum–in annual savings.

Comment by nxm 24 minutes ago

Can some of the roles be done by fewer individuals? Do you really think there's 0 waste in ever growing schools administrative staff?

Comment by gruez 19 minutes ago

>The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing.

Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase.

Comment by bayarearefugee 6 minutes ago

> Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase.

It can't.

The only axis upon which teacher "productivity" could increase is by increasing the size of their classes.

Every study and every practical example of doing that ever done shows that it negatively impacts student outcomes.

Not because the teacher is failing to be whatever it is you imagine "more productive" to be but because there is a minimum amount of attention needed per student for them to not fall through the cracks and one person's attention is not scalable.

Comment by nyc_data_geek1 12 minutes ago

This is not creating widgets or lines of code, not creating a product for consumption, this is fostering the development of inquisitive minds, hopefully encouraging them to become critical thinkers and ultimately the next generation of leaders who will push the bounds of human knowledge further than ever before.

Why would better tools be expected to do enable teachers to do that for more students at a time?

There is a lot of research out there showing worse educational outcomes as class sizes increase. This is one of the areas where wealth disparities in education manifest; rich areas tend to have smaller class sizes, and historically the very rich would pay for private tutors for their kids, whereas poor kids are stuck with bigger class sizes, less individual attention from educators, and typically average worse educational outcomes.

Comment by mertd 11 minutes ago

What I observe as a parent; 95% of the teacher's job cannot be scaled with technology.

Comment by reassess_blind 43 minutes ago

Not to mention there are more students.

Comment by mistrial9 39 minutes ago

in California there are not more students.. all tiers of schools show falling enrollments, year after year. Except community colleges, where they have discovered that more than 15% of all students are ghost enrolled.

-- California K-12 public school enrollment fell by 74,961 students (a 1.3% decline) for the 2025-26 school year, marking the largest drop since the pandemic. This loss was significantly higher than the state’s Department of Finance projection of only 10,000 students.

The decline is driven by lower birth rates and a reduction in immigration, with the latter exacerbated by families fearing enforcement actions. Los Angeles County accounted for nearly half of the state's total loss, losing 32,953 students, largely due to a decrease in newcomer students within the LAUSD.

Private schools saw a steeper drop of 6.6%, while homeschooling declined by 3.7%. The enrollment drop is causing budget deficits, leading to staff layoffs, program cuts, and potential school closures. Hispanic students experienced the largest numeric loss (48,064), while white students saw the largest percentage decline (2.68%). English learner enrollment fell by 8.2%, partly due to reclassification and partly due to out-migration.

Comment by reassess_blind 31 minutes ago

That's surprising. Surely there are still more than there were 30 years ago?

Comment by dmitrygr 1 hour ago

> Given that school budgets are absolutely gutted

What now?

https://edsource.org/2026/how-california-compares-to-other-s...

https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti...

Comment by thatfrenchguy 1 hour ago

Compared to cost of living though?

Comment by sgc 55 minutes ago

It is just a fact that California schools are laying off a large percentage of personnel and getting rid of many programs. Pink slips by the thousands have been sent out that will take effect in a couple months at the end of the school year. If you don't know that, you are not informed.

Those links are completely irrelevant because they are out of date. Budget had temporarily increased due to the availability of COVID funds, and now there is a very harsh snap in the other direction. Shortfalls are directly linked to actions by the Trump administration, and their downstream impacts. Every state needs to step up and deal with it.

Here is one example of how that is happening, it is a far more significant problem than just this: https://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr25/yr25rel35.asp

Comment by idiotsecant 1 hour ago

Your own link says CA spends less than UNESCO’s 15.0% standard.

Also, you could frame this in a much more information dense way by making an active claim about something instead of just spamming a bunch of links.

Comment by dmix 1 hour ago

A quick google search of the UNSECO target is "at least 15% of total public expenditure (or 4–6% of GDP)" and both the US (~5%) and California (~4-5% of gdp) already pass that criteria.

Comment by rayiner 1 hour ago

The UNESCO target is calibrated for developing countries. Few developed countries spend that much on non-tertiary education: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/public-spending-on-e.... Canada spends about 3.3%, less than California.

(I think your numbers include tertiary education. My numbers are K-12 only. I’m not sure which of those the UNESCO target is based on.)

Comment by _--__--__ 1 hour ago

The confusion/disconnect between those two benchmarks suggests something about the size of CA's public expenditure...

Comment by rayiner 1 hour ago

The UNESCO standard is meant for developing countries.

In 2021, California spent about $121 billion on K-12, out of a GDP of $3.4 trillion, or about 3.5% of state GDP. That puts it above the OECD average of 3.3%, around the same as France at 3.5%. blob:https://www.oecd.org/702dcc03-0749-41b6-af41-112fd1af1bfb. (This is the parent page: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/public-spending-on-e.... You have to select non-tertiary education, which is basically what we call K-12.)

Comment by wiseowise 1 hour ago

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Comment by pclowes 1 hour ago

This is wild. A mistake of this magnitude should result in several positions becoming vacant and many politicians being ineligible for any future offices.

If a government can’t budget accurately everything else they do is likely even less competent. Every number and statistic they report should be treated with suspicion. Without clear data who is to say they are doing anything helpful at all?

Comment by dlcarrier 1 hour ago

The errors were all within the CalPERS pension fund. The pensions are guaranteed by the state, so the fund is notorious for a complete lack of fiduciary duty, and these types of errors track with the general quality of their operation.

Comment by wahern 1 hour ago

Alternatively, since we're spit balling, the administrators and/or accounting staff decided to strategically error on the side of a shortfall because its politically impossible to get the state to fully fund the pension obligations or to stop effectively raiding it.

Comment by dlcarrier 1 minute ago

That's what California's Parks feistiest did, 15 years ago: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/State-parks-director-res...

Comment by 1 hour ago

Comment by anon291 59 minutes ago

Recall that funds like this are one of the largest owners of the hedge funds that drive up property values for American homes via their reckless speculation. The state (well states really -- CA is not alone) desperately needs to make more than market returns to guarantee their unfunded pension liabilities.

Comment by pclowes 1 hour ago

[flagged]

Comment by tyre 1 hour ago

Or!

People understand that everyone makes mistakes and firing anyone who does only leads to people prioritizing hiding their mistakes vs. fixing them.

It’s helpful, whenever you find yourself saying something like, “the only real explanation to me”, to think of a good faith version before assuming that the most cynical take is reality.

Comment by pclowes 30 minutes ago

I think there are mistakes and then there are mistakes.

There is a point where the postmortem needs to stop being blameless.

Getting things like this wrong is an existential risk to a important institution. We can’t be genuinely concerned about lost faith in institutions and also not hold them to the highest levels of accountability.

Comment by 1 hour ago

Comment by bongoman37 1 hour ago

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Comment by hedgehog 1 hour ago

The article doesn't really explain the overall budget, for scale it looks like in the 2025-2026 budget year CA planned to spend about $228B compared to $216B revenue ($227B in the previous year).

https://ebudget.ca.gov/2025-26/pdf/Enacted/BudgetSummary/Sum...

Comment by nxobject 2 hours ago

If you want a vivid illustration (from an adjacent state) about the impact of pessimistic fiscal projections: Oregon has an infamous "kicker" law that refunds income taxes collected in excess of projections (plus a 2% margin). The state faces the same budgetary challenges as California... but can't project too pessimistically lest it leave money off the table.

Comment by jaggederest 1 hour ago

Oregon's kicker law is a textbook example of bad economic policy, sadly. It essentially means that in boom years the state can't accumulate any general funds for recessions, which is half of the point of a state-level political entity in the first place. Balanced budgets and pay as you go are fabulous over the medium term, but over the short term of a year or two during a disaster or recession, governmental spending is critical as a counterbalance to reduced investment and general employment income.

Comment by jerlam 1 hour ago

California is also required to refund taxpayers if it accumulates too much revenue. The state's spending is capped at some limit set in 1979 with adjustments for inflation and population.

https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/qa-why-hitting-gann-li...

Comment by JumpCrisscross 32 minutes ago

> in boom years the state can't accumulate any general funds for recessions

Genuine question: have states had the discipline not to raid these coffers in the boom years?

The alternative is borrowing in downturns. That works because during recessions interest rates are low. The opposite problem then manifests, however, which is the state continuing to borrow through the recovery.

Maybe instead of citing shortfalls and surpluses, such laws should cite unemployment and income growth.

Comment by tantalor 1 hour ago

Well maybe they should "project" a certain amount of revenue that goes to savings every year automatically, instead of waiting for a boom year windfall.

Comment by Supermancho 1 hour ago

> Oregon's kicker law is a textbook example of bad economic policy, sadly

You must be talking about non-economic textbooks, otherwise this makes no sense.

Comment by lotsofpulp 54 minutes ago

Oregon has a biennial budget, so some Oregon employee predicts how much money Oregon will earn over the next 2 to 3 years (which is basically impossible to do), and then Oregon leaders have to come up with a spending plan equal to or less than that revenue estimate.

However, Oregon's costs have no relation to the revenue that the state predicted it would get, so it is constrains the solution space when unforeseen costs or cost trends happen. For example, Oregon predicts a certain amount of revenue, but gets 3% more than the predicted revenue, but that is because prices for everything went up 3% more than expected, now Oregon has less money than it needs to pay its expenses (since it has to return any revenue which was 2% over the estimate).

Oregon is the only jurisdiction I have ever heard of with this kind of strict refund law, and its rigidity seems to be the main issue, along with the 2 year forecast requirement (since forecasting even 1 year is hard enough).

Comment by jjtheblunt 1 hour ago

"Gov. Newsom in January projected the state would have to grapple with a $2.9 billion shortfall. The confirmed miscalculation means that shortfall could be much smaller."

So, the title is just plain misleading.

California is less in deficit than they earlier calculated.

Comment by IvyMike 2 hours ago

This but for government:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/z4meh0/game_design...

Comment by tyre 2 hours ago

A little “bank error in your favor” sitchu. We love to see it.

Comment by snickerbockers 2 hours ago

"See what?" --Gavin

Comment by seiferteric 1 hour ago

Didn't something like this just happen last year (or year before) but in the opposite direction?

Comment by dogscatstrees 29 minutes ago

They should have used Claude Code for Excel.

Comment by SilentM68 18 minutes ago

My Opinion:

Anyone who thinks this is a glitch in the system, or an honest mistake, should shift their mindset and start thinking more like a detective and less like a politician.

California has been steadily declining for years, now. Waste, mismanagement, fraud are commonplace. This needs to be investigated by impartial third parties that can't be bought and paid for whose commitment must be verified via polygraph. Those that are found guilty need to be prosecuted and jailed.

Being that this is California, what will end up happening is that the politicians will end up investigating themselves and miraculously be found not liable.

******

Unbiased-AI Deep Dive:

https://archive.ph/jdyO4

Comment by cdrnsf 1 hour ago

Oops! They're still far easier to deal with than any federal agency.

Comment by tonymet 1 hour ago

it’s less than 1% of the budget, and the state keeps overspending. Don’t get too optimistic

Comment by boznz 1 hour ago

Another indicator that the administration hasn't got a fucking clue what or where their (your) money goes.

Comment by noobahoi 1 hour ago

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Comment by whalesalad 1 hour ago

2 billion surplus? that's good for about 150 linear feet of high speed rail track in the middle of Salinas.

Comment by testfoobar 1 hour ago

Give it back?

Comment by mlmonkey 1 hour ago

> California's legislative leaders have known for months but did not make the issue public.

Why would they give up a chance to make more money from the people? The government never misses an opportunity to pad its coffers. Reminds me of the CA State Parks department, which squirreled away millions of dollars and then was crying about lack of funding and hence wanted to shut down some parks.

Comment by xp84 1 hour ago

Fun fact: I recently vacationed in Hawaii and couldn’t help but notice, despite groceries costing about 2x, gas there is a dollar cheaper than at home in California. California just can’t get enough tax money.

Comment by verteu 1 minute ago

The best comparison is probably "overall tax burden": https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/tax-burden-by-state...

When you include all taxes (eg property tax), there's surprisingly little variation between states -- eg, CA #46 is 13.5% of income, while TX #6 is 8.6% of income.

Comment by reducesuffering 20 minutes ago

Not really a fact, more of a bad anecdote. Currently HI gas is just $0.17 cheaper than CA, and I see many CA gas stations at $5.09, just like HI. A decent chunk of that comes from strict CA low pollution refining, you know, to help you breath better...

https://gasprices.aaa.com/state-gas-price-averages/