The Lagunitas School District needs to cut between $170,000 and $200,000 from its yearly budget if it wants to end ongoing deficit spending and avoid falling below reserve requirements, superintendent John Carroll told a newly formed finance committee this month. The county has asked to see a rough outline of what the district will cut by March, giving the committee just two months to trim its roughly $3.5 million annual budget. Members are meeting at 4 p.m. today for a primer on the budgeting process and a discussion about possible cuts. Lagunitas has been deficit spending for years—not due to the mismanagement of funds, Mr. Carroll said, but to a mixture of recession impacts, fluctuating federal funding (that has now stabilized) and rising special education costs. Though he is not worried about running out of money anytime soon, the board needs to brace itself for uncomfortable cuts, he said. Teachers received a four percent salary increase in 2013, but last September, the teacher’s union asked the board to open up negotiations on salaries as well as benefits and class sizes. Soon after, in November, the school board approved an updated budget with a qualified status—meaning that the district would have to change its spending so reserves would not dip below 8 percent of the total budget in three years. (The state requires districts to keep 5 percent in reserves, but recommends up to eight percent. The Lagunitas board requires the latter amount.)  At the finance committee’s first meeting, board president Richard Sloan said he wanted to brainstorm potential revenue enhancement, “not just cuts.” One elementary school parent wondered if parent groups could find new ways of raising money through a nonprofit, and a teacher wondered if the school could combine classes when teachers retire rather than rehiring the position—although one trustee pointed out that savings through attrition are complicated by the fact that elementary students are divided between Montessori and Open Classroom programs. But trimming will be an inevitable part of the process—and it won’t be easy, said board trustee Denise Santa Cruz-Bohman. “Eighty to 90 some odd percent of what we take in goes directly to people and benefits to people,” she said. “It’s not like, ‘Okay, let’s just cut this.’ Anything we do is going to affect the people that work for us. And they need raises.”