Coronado Unified adopts 2025–26 budget, board commits to reductions to meet state reserve rules

The Coronado Unified School District Governing Board on Thursday approved the district's proposed 2025–26 budget and passed a business-services resolution directing the district to identify approximately $2,000,000 in budget reductions or revenue enhancements to meet a state-mandated minimum reserve.

Deputy Superintendent Salvador Salamanca, presenting the budget, told trustees the district had built the 2025–26 plan without a signed state budget and is projecting a transition to "basic aid" funding in the 2027–28 school year. Salamanca said Coronado has accelerated repayment of redevelopment agency (RDA) debt and expects most remaining RDA-related payments to finish in the 2026–27 school year, but a small share of property-tax receipts (about $400,000 a year) will continue to flow through the successor agency until some long-lived obligations are resolved.

"We're projecting to become a basic aid district in 27–28," Salamanca said. "One point of information: some RDA debt will outlive the final payment, but that does not change our projection for basic aid in 27–28." He urged trustees that cash flow in a basic-aid district will change because property-tax receipts arrive on a different schedule and recommended maintaining stronger reserves (about 17 percent of annual expenditures) to float monthly obligations.

Why it matters: shifting to basic aid changes how the district receives operating revenue (property taxes instead of monthly state apportionments) and increases…