It's been a dismal time for public schools in the state of California, and it seems as though the dark cloud won't be lifting soon.

Budget cuts are continuing in California's public schools, with the state making revisions to the budget for public education in the 2009-10 school year. Amador County Unified School District is feeling the crunch and making reductions in the transportation department.

On Aug. 17, the state issued changes to the budget after having adopted the education budget in February 2009. To accommodate the state's fiscal adjustments, ACUSD made reductions of 20 percent, resulting in $302,853 for the Home to School budget. ACUSD Superintendent Dick Glock was solemn in his response to the additional cuts at the regular school board meeting on Wednesday, where board members approved the cuts. Glock stated that he was disappointed about the reductions because students have been making academic improvements this year.

"We're on track and every time we have to address issues like this, it's not a favorite situation," Glock said. "We're not building towards something and it's making it very difficult."

The reductions from the transportation department include reducing particular services to be cut by approximately 20 hours per day, and reducing the transportation supervisor's work year from a 260 work-day contract to a 217-day contract. The school board stated that they were aware of the difficulties that the budget cuts in February would create, but now with the recent changes, it will be an additional hardship for local schools.

"Taking a million-dollar hit is pretty remarkable," noted Glock. "We will continue to advance student achievement. The kicker is that it's going to do the same thing next year."

The district also stated that it will not be reducing bus services completely, but will maintain some of the routes provided by the transportation department as it had before, but unfortunately the cuts will be an ongoing occurrence in the 2010-11 school year.

ACUSD plans to avoid taking too much of a financial hit next year when Gov. Schwarzenegger proposes an additional $4.2 million cut to the state's education budget by continuing to not spend money. The district saved about $1.3 million during the 2008-09 school year by stopping spending. The district also has $1.2 million that must be set aside for committed expenses such as revolving cash, stores and orders purchased in the previous year.

"We are not dealing with suggestions," added Glock about the revisions. "We're dealing with reality."