The angst of the budget season was evident at the East Williston School Board meeting on Monday night, as East Williston Superintendent of Schools Lorna Lewis made a presentation of the most sobering financial factors the school board is confronting.
Lewis noted the East Williston School Board anticipates losing $324,000 in state aid for 2011-12. If the school board was to craft a zero increase school budget for next year, the loss in state aid would still necessitate increasing the tax levy by .7 percent.
To comply with the proposed 2 percent cap in the tax levy (currently $47.4 million) in 2011-12, next year’s budget would have to decrease by 1 percent from the current $50.2 million budget, rendering a budget of $49.97 million, according to Lewis.
While Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposed tax cap would not take effect until the 2012-13 budget cycle, Lewis warned that the school board must anticipate the advent of the cap as it prepares the current budget.
“As we build the budget, we have to take into consideration the budget for the following year,” she said, adding in a sarcastic tone, “the state education department chose just the right time to add more mandates.”
Those new mandates now require four years of both mathematics and science courses for high school students, as the passing score for the Algebra regents exam is being raised to 80 and the passing score for English is now being set at 75.
“The point is, if you add another year of science and add a year of mathematics, you’re adding it without more funding,” Lewis said.
Lewis pointed out that the board will also have to cope with anticipated increases in pension and health care costs, while modifying any budget increase to avoid increasing the tax levy, and inviting a need for more severe cuts to meet the tax cap in the following year.
Jacqueline Fitzpatrick, the district business administrator, reported that the school district has a $1.2 million surplus over anticipated expenditures, based on a six-month audit of the current budget. But she also said the costs of the district’s health care coverage would jump by 19 percent between this year and next year.
“The devil’s in the details,” said former board member John O’Kelly, who estimated that the $324,000 reduction in state aid would actually translate to a 2.4 percent increase in the tax levy.
Turning to the topic of anticipated revenue not received by the district, board president Mark Kamberg said the school board is seeking advice from school board attorney John Sheahan on whether it has grounds to bring a lawsuit against the state for $450,000 in grant money it has not received. That includes $150,000 spent last year for renovating the track at The Wheatley School and the playground at the North Side School.
In a sign of the board’s increasing financial circumspection, Kamberg objected to addressing a policy on field trips without some indication of what the field trips would cost.
“I don’t want to approve a policy without cost,” Kamberg said.
“You’ve done this in the past,” Lewis said.
But Kamberg remained adamant and the rest of the board backed his position, voting 5-0 to table consideration of the field trip policy.
