by Alex Brooks
At a budget workshop held on March 3, there was some news on the evolution of the budget, but uncertainties about how much State aid the District can expect continued to bedevil school budget deliberations.
Superintendent Ken Facin said he now has firm information on who will be retiring after this year. Two teachers, four teaching assistants, a custodian and two food service workers have submitted letters of resignation. While the original plan called for the District to downsize by 16 people, after factoring in these retirements, Facin says the current plan requires layoffs of seven employees, which will be Teaching Assistants and Support Staff. The two teachers who are retiring will not be replaced, but there will be no layoffs of teachers.
Another thing that will improve the District’s budget picture is that the administration has determined that two of its tax certiorari reserves are dedicated to situations that have been resolved, so those funds can soon be released back into the general fund.
Although the revised budget presented at the Budget Workshop showed a tax levy increase of 9.5%, Facin said between the seven layoffs that he has recommended and the tax certiorari funds, that increase could be brought down to zero.
Facin noted that these are only his recommendations and no actual decisions will be made on these matters until the Board acts on them. The Board has a regular meeting on March 17, and it has a budget workshop on April 7 at which a budget will be adopted.
These figures that Facin was presenting are based on the Governor’s budget, in which State aid to the District was cut by $551,000. There is some talk of rescinding those cuts in education aid, but the District has not heard anything through official channels about this. Facin said he has read in the newspapers that Governor Paterson said he would eliminate cuts in education aid, but he can’t base his budget on remarks reported in the news media. “At this point it’s all speculation. There has been all kinds of conflicting news about this. The only firm numbers we have are the Governor’s budget.”
Facin said if the cuts are eliminated, the Board can decide at that point how to allocate the additional funds. He said the Board might decide to go beyond eliminating increases in the local tax levy and actually cut it by one or two percent. Or it might decide to pay off some of the capital project debt to improve the District’s financial position for the future.