LYNWOOD — Teachers, parents and school district watchers who were alarmed last week when the Lynwood school board approved a contingency resolution that allowed district officials to transfer cash from one fund to another to make the May 1 payroll, can stand down.

The state, however, came through with its commitment of nearly $10 million for the county on April 30.

Even board members were frightened by the possibility of not making payroll on time, according to school board Vice President Alfonso Morales, who said he and his colleagues were told at the start of the April 28 school board meeting about an e-mail the district received from the Los Angeles County Office of Education stating that such a resolution needed to be passed within 48 hours of its receipt because funds from the state had not yet been received at the county level.

Morales said the idea of the district not being able to pay its bills on time was unsettling for him as much as it was for the people sitting in the audience at the board meeting.

Read from the floor by the district’s Business Director Bill Agopian, the resolution was approved on a contingency basis not only to be able to pay the district’s bills by May 1, Agopian said, but also to have cash on hand for payroll on the same day.

The district’s cash flow, the business director said, comes from the state and federal government and does not come out of the district’s general or reserve funds, as some might presume.

“The resolution dealt with the cash flow of the district, not with any amount of money that has been spent,” Morales said. “The state allocates the actual cash that it has committed to the district on a monthly basis, and we basically had not received the allotment for April. … That was the problem, the cash flow. Not necessarily the amount of money that the district has in its budget, but the actual cash on hand.”

Fortunately, the state came through one day before the deadline and the nearly $10 million deposit was made to the county, resulting in resolutions like the one approved in Lynwood at the last minute not being needed.

Finding itself empty-handed just days before having to pay certain bills and to make payroll was a first for the district, Morales said, but it certainly was “a reflection of the times.”

“Not only that, but whenever you have something that is out of the ordinary such as this, of course it’s going to raise some eyebrows and there is going to be some concern, especially if people don’t understand what is going on,” Morales said. “The fact that there was a problem with cash flow, I think alarmed many of us. I mean if this whole crisis situation hasn’t come home to really rest with people’s minds, I mean such a resolution being passed, shows the actual eminent danger that the state and the district are in.”

After Agopian read the resolution, school board member Rachel Chavez requested that Agopian and school board President Jose Solache explain to the audience what the resolution meant and why it was added to the agenda at the last minute.

Parent Arturo Ramos said he is glad Chavez made that request. Sitting out in the audience and hearing that the district didn’t have money to pay its teachers was “unbearable,” said Ramos, who has brought forward dozens of fiscal mismanagement complaints to board members, that he said mostly fall on deaf ears.

“Even though that cash comes from the state, it’s hard to sweep under the rug why the district in 2003 had $24 million in its reserve fund, and now has less than $5. … And now the district tells us it has no money to pay its bills or its teachers. It’s news you don’t want to hear when you’ve been working toward making someone accountable for all this wasted money.”

Ramos said he is glad the district didn’t have to transfer any cash from account to account. If there was trust between the community and teachers and the school district, then it would be simple to accept that the district had to go to other accounts to pay its bills, but that hasn’t been the case in Lynwood for years, he said.

“I’m glad they gave [members of the audience] details about the resolution,” Ramos said. “But they didn’t tell us what funds they would have to go to, or which programs would be affected. That’s the kind of stuff we’ve been dealing with for years, where district administrators didn’t go to resolutions to transfer funds or purchase equipment or even get board approval first. There’s a habit in this district of just doing, then asking for approval later, or dealing with the consequences afterwards.”

In his opinion, board members should ask district officials to make in-depth fiscal analysis of certain items before casting their votes. “There’s not enough of that,” Ramos said.

Morales said it was his understanding that the district is in a lot better shape than other school districts that don’t have other accounts to go to when a crisis arises.

“It’s unfortunate that some people are very narrow minded, but this problem really is not a Lynwood school district problem,” Morales said. “It’s not that our expenses went up, it’s our cash flow that went down.”

He said the state was probably trying to hold onto the money as long as possible for interest purposes. “At the same time, if the state is trying to maneuver and do things in order to help increase its revenue as much as possible, and it’s affecting when they release the funds to school districts, it’s definitely a sign of the times as far as I’m concerned.”

If the state had not come through with the funds, those borrowed or transferred from one account to another, would have had to be replaced within 140 days, Agopian said.

“It would have been a temporary loan,” Agopian said. “Whatever funds were moved, the district would have had 140 days to put the money back.”

In any case, under such a resolution, the district would have been prohibited to deplete any account entirely when transferring from one account to another.