Santa Clarita Valley superintendents Friday offered a bleak outlook for the five local school districts, which are being slammed with budget cuts because of a state fiscal mess.

"When things crash, our funding crashes as well," Newhall School District Superintendent Marc Winger told more than 100 community, education and business leaders during the SCV Education Foundation's Principal for a Day luncheon.

A mix of issues, ranging from the economic downturn to outdated funding formulas, are to blame for the fiscal crisis facing local school districts.

Many of the local school districts are facing declining enrollment, which means fewer dollars per student.

Santa Clarita Valley schools, particularly Saugus Union and Newhall school districts, are among the lowest-funded school districts in Los Angeles County and across the state. An outdated property tax formula created in the '70s when the Santa Clarita Valley was a rural community is to blame.

Federal funding amounts to less than 10 percent of a local school district's budget.

"We are almost completely dependent on state funding now," Winger said.

Personnel makes up for about 85 percent of a school district's budget. The rest of the budget goes toward things like supplies and technology, Winger said.

The Hart district had an operating budget of $184 million five years ago, said Jaime Castellanos, superintendent of the William S. Hart Union High School District. The budget has shrunk to $169 million and Castellanos anticipates another $20 million will have to be cut from the budget over the next two years.

Reports indicate that education might not be fully funded again until 2014 or 2015, Sulphur Springs School District Superintendent Robert Nolet said.

Until then, school districts have spent last year and this year increasing class sizes and cutting support jobs, all in the hopes of keeping cuts as far away from the classroom as possible.

"At a certain point, there's only so much you can do," Castellanos said.

The state is facing a $20 billion budget shortfall for next year, which will most likely impact local school districts.

The state budget crisis means school districts are receiving less money.

In 2008-09, the state began paying school districts 92 cents on the dollar, Nolet said. This year's figure has dropped to 81 cents on the dollar, he said.

Along with the funding drop, school districts will receive $250 less per student.

"We foolishly believed that education is the highest priority for California," Nolet said. "We're not sure that we've been very well protected by the governor's proposal."

While local school districts, which are responsible for educating more than 49,000 Santa Clarita Valley students, remain at the mercy of the state, educators have other options for funding.

Those include parcel taxes, which assess a fee for local property owners that goes to school districts and education foundations for school districts,

Superintendents were quick to point out that local schools are not failing and pointed to the consistently strong performance on state standardized tests.

"Public education in Santa Clarita is still on top," Saugus Union School District Superintendent Judy Fish said.

For Fish, it's a matter of the community working with school districts.

"We're also looking at opportunities," Fish said. "We're listening to the community. We're listening to parents."

Yet educators are unsure of the long-term effects of the cuts they are forced to make.

"What's lost in a couple of years takes decades to repair," Castaic Union School District Superintendent James Gibson said.