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General News: Proposed School Budget Slows Spending
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| Assistant superintendent Sotland introduced the proposed budget with a power point presentation that is available online at www.cornwallschools.com. |
March 19, 2009
The Cornwall Central School District unveiled a proposed $55 million budget on Monday that is a 1.74 percent increase in spending over the current year. If adopted, the budget would mean a tax increase of 2.76 percent.
When he introduced the budget proposal, Harvey Sotland, the assistant superintendent for business, said that the budget had been delayed by three weeks because of ongoing discussions in Albany about how to set state aid to the school district – and that the district still doesn’t have all the answers.
Sotland said that while no programs were cut in the proposed budget, five fulltime teaching positions and five fulltime kindergarten teaching assistant positions were eliminated. These cuts were softened through a combination of attrition and federal funds available in the stimulus package that would mean that only two teachers and three teaching assistants would actually be laid off. A number of smaller cuts, including curriculum development work and clerical overtime, were made throughout the district.
The spending increases result in large part from contractual salary and benefit increases for the district staff, Sotland said.
Assistant superintendent Sotland said that he is still awaiting final word from Albany on whether the district will have to pay a $1.3 million assessment made by the governor’s office to offset the state’s deficit. Another item still up in the air is whether counties will continue to pay for pre-school special education needs or if the cost -- $110,000 for Cornwall -- will be shifted to the schools. And, if the state approves the MTA payroll tax, the district will have to pay as much as $96,000 additional.
Sotland explained that the most serious impact on revenue came from the freezing of foundation aid because the district had been operating based on the assurance that it would increase by $1.5 million in the next school year.
When asked how it would be handled if more than anticipated state or federal aid is awarded, schools superintendent Timothy Rehm explained that it would be in the hands of the board to decide whether the additional money would go toward replacing some of the proposed cuts, or if it would be used to pay down the overall budget in order to keep taxpayers’ school tax bills down.
“We don’t want to dismantle the incredible educational system we have here,” Rehm said.
In an unusual twist this year, if the budget fails to pass, the contingency budget that would replace it is actually higher than the current $55 million proposal. Assistant superintendent Sotland explained that the contingency budget is factored on the basis of the current budget. But in this case, the lower budget would become the contingency budget, further reduced by $45,000 of non-contngency budget items.
The proposed budget still faces review by the Board of Education and input from the School Budget Advisory Committee, as well as the final word from Albany before it is put to the voters on May 19.
Visit www.cornwallschools.com and click on budget information for more details on the proposal.
Comments:
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If, as the piece above reports, "the lower budget would become the contingency budget, further reduced by $45,000 of non-contngency budget items," do I correctly take it that this year's budget vote will be over $45,000 in a budget of $55,000,000?
If so, voters will have a say concerning 0.0008 of the budget, that's less than 1/10th of one percent.
How can that be a meaningful level of taxpayer oversight?
Jon Chase
Cornwall-on-Hudson
posted by Jon Chase on 03/20/09 at 5:17 PM
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