This Is Not The BCS Budget!

by Thaddeus Flint
“This is not the budget that will end up being presented to the public,” said Dr. Brian Howard, the Berlin School District Interim Superintendent, to the Berlin School Board at the Budget Workshop on March 16.
Why is that important to know? Because of this number – 8.31%. This is the amount your school tax levy would be increased for the 2011-2102 school year were the budget presented at the workshop to be the same budget you would get to vote on this coming May. Berlin Central School district residents might then have thought to themselves, “That’s OK. If this were put to a vote, it would never pass.” In most cases that is probably what would have happened. With the majority of residents voting no, the budget would have been thrown out and a contingent budget put into place. But, strangely, this year the contingency budget at this point would be $423,862 more expensive than the draft budget. So if the voters rejected a tax increase of 8.3% they would end up with a tax increase of at the very least 8.3%. Interesting. Its almost the old Soviet version of voting where the voter was given a slip with one name on it and asked to put it in the voting box. It is not true that the voter had no choice. He could simply cross out the name on the slip and write in a new name, then go place it in a different box. That voter was then usually given a long period of time to think about democracy at his new residence in Siberia.
A Reasonable Man
As Howard said though, this is not the budget. It’s just the beginning of the process of creating the real budget, the one the voter will get to cast his or her ballot for or against this coming May. Howard understands that the District cannot afford an 8.31% tax levy increase. He is a reasonable man. What he did not understand, he said, looking at those sitting to the left and right of him in the Berlin High School library Tuesday night, is “why people want to be school board members?”
Why indeed? The major issues the Berlin School Board will have to deal with while making their decisions are:
• The Governor’s 2011-2012 budget, which proposes a State Aid reduction of $679,489 for Berlin.
• The Federal Economic Stimulus Fund Program, which ends in 2010-2011; Berlin received $501,886 in 2010-2011.
• In 2011-2012 the District will be eligible for $420,076 from the Education Job Fund; these funds will not be available after 2011-2012.
• The contract with the Berlin Teachers Association expires June 30, 2011; this budget assumes that salaries will only increase by step next year.
• The contract with CSEA continues through June 30, 2012, and includes a 3% increase.
• Significantly higher mandated payments to the New York State pension systems in 2011 and 2012. (ERS and TRS)
• Health Insurance costs that continue to increase.
Why anyone would want to spend their time, unpaid, constructing a budget with so many factors against them from the very beginning is certainly a question worth pondering, as it would seem Dr. Howard has.
Well this year the Board has a real challenge. They have a budget before them which already has $144,348 of cuts from the get go. From $18,281,761 in 2010 – 2011 to the proposed $18,137,368. Yet everyone knows that that budget is unacceptable, impossible, unreal.
So how is it that if you have cut this much already you are still left with needing an increase of 8.31% in tax revenue? From the factors listed above the first three are the most important. The District is going to get $679,489 less in aid from New York State. Thank Governor Cuomo for that. And with the Federal Economic Stimulus Fund Program ending, Berlin has another $501,886 less to work with in 2011 – 2012. The Federal government is, however, allocating a one time grant of $420,076. Yet even with this grant, right off the bat the District is down $761,299. With not even factoring in the STEP increase for salaries and higher pension payments, it’s glaringly obvious now where the shortfall came from. The state. The feds.
So what are the elected members of the Berlin School Board to do? The Board needs to make choices and then go back to the school administrators and tell them where they want to end up. This, the first draft, is a budget everyone can for once can come to a consensus on – that it’s an impossible budget for the District – cuts have been pretty radical. Tough choices were already made. Howard said, “The days of painless choices, I think, are gone.” Probably the most painful so far is the elimination of five teaching assistant positions. That’s five jobs; five people. These are not just any teaching assistants. The five positions are teacher assistants in special education, presumably an area that could use as many assistants as possible, especially in a District where 18% of the students are identified as special education students. The national average in 2008, for example, was around 12.1%. As Board Member John Nash pointed out, “A few months back this Board was fighting to put teaching assistants on staff – and now its OK to cut out five of them! I’m not so sure our teaching staff are going to be feeling very happy with that.”
The School Board members responded thusly to this first draft budget proposal:
Elizabeth Miller – “We obviously can’t go with an 8.5% tax levy… bare minimum 4%… but my heart of hearts says the 2% range. Its going to be extremely painful.”
Alan Webster, Jr. – “I think we really need to come to grips with the economic environments of these communities and recognizing our poverty… that it’s very strong… and we must shoot for a 0% tax levy with no use of reserves.”
John Nash – “I think this budget should be reduced by an additional 10% minimum… We asked two towns to sacrifice their community schools, and we do not show a huge savings as a result… I know we have some potential cost savings in the area of Administration… I’m not sure we need a Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds as well.”
It might be noted that the current Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds, Cyril Grant, was sitting at a table in front of Nash as this was said.
Gina Goodermote – She asked if the District had looked into working with the surrounding districts. “If we could save some money on… paper and fuel supplies… share the pain?”
Superintendent Dr. Howard replied that he had looked at one time into possibly working with other districts and perhaps sharing on other matters and that he had no problem looking further into it. “It’s worth asking,” he said.
When Board Member Goodermote was asked what type of tax increase she was looking at she replied, “Zero percent.”
Frank Zwack – “We have never looked at the non-educational services and looked into whether we should bid it out or not do it in the house… our lunch program is bid out, and now it makes a decent profit… I will support going to a zero tax levy… I don’t think anything is sacred here… if we are going to make hard cuts for education, we are going to have to make the hard cuts across the board.”
Beverly Stewart – “In front of me we are seeing a disaster… I’d like to really believe we are going to get an increase in State aid, but we can’t assume that… we need to take an unbiased look at programs to see what’s working and what’s not working… we need to get down to a zero percent increase… we have families in this district who can’t afford to heat their homes.”
Superintendent Howard probably best summed up the consensus of the Board when he said, “There are no painless solutions to this. This is going to hurt.”