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Thank you, Alameda, for supporting our students so generously in 2011. In good times and in hard times, our schools and our community continue to stay strong by working together.

This supportive partnership helps every student every day at every school in the district. Grandparents who volunteer in the classroom, local businesses that donate to school fundraisers and all the community organizations that support young people and their families are just a few of the many shining examples of what makes Alameda special.

On top of all that so many already do to make this one of the nation's "100 Best Communities for Young People," this year hundreds of people from across Alameda volunteered nights and weekends to pass a new replacement parcel tax, Measure A, to protect us from unprecedented reductions in education funding made by the state.

We have budgeted strictly to what the community expected for our great schools when it passed Measure A and will continue to protect the core educational priorities specifi ed in Measure A.

California's broken school funding system is the root cause of the budget challenges that we must continue to face together in the Alameda Unifi ed School District (AUSD). We will keep up the fi ght for Sacramento to fi x school funding.

While that fi ght goes on, we will continue to be fi scally conservative to ensure we have a buffer locally to protect us from the bad budget news out there right now for students, school employees and school districts across California.

Sacramento cuts funds for school districts, makes additional cuts on top of those cuts and then delays indefi nitely the delivery of much of what is left.

For example, in 2011 the state applied a "deficit factor" to reduce by more than 19 percent the already-low amount it was to deliver to AUSD's general fund and then delayed indefinitely (through a "deferral") the transfer of more than 38 percent of even that reduced amount it owed AUSD.

As a result, the only way we are able to keep the district's "checking account" positive with suffi - cient cash fl ow is to draw on our reserve and contingency funds, our "savings account."

Our updated multi-year budget projections show that we will be able to keep our "checking account" healthy this year and next year, but only by continuing to draw down the reserve in our "savings account."

Measure A is protecting our core programs, but our updated budget projections show that the cuts in Sacramento mean that our "savings account" will be depleted within three years.

This is the painful reality of the budget environment we face in California.

We will learn more about the state's fi nancial picture when Gov. Jerry Brown presents his budget plan in January and will continue to update the community on where things stand.

Whatever the new year will bring in Sacramento, we will make our way through these diffi cult times by continuing to work together here in Alameda.

Kirsten Vital is the Alameda Unifi ed School District superintendent.