A first look at Baldwin budget

Baldwin residents, although not many, got their first peek at the school district’s proposed 2015-16 budget last week, at the first of three scheduled work sessions this month.

Superintendent Dr. Shari Camhi shared the presentation at Baldwin High School with Carol Smith, the district’s assistant business manager, focusing on the administrative and capital portions of the spending plan. Overall, Camhi said, the district is aiming for a $124.4 million budget, an increase of $2.4 million, or 2 percent, over the current spending plan.

To formulate its budget, the district is projecting a 1.51 percent tax levy increase — the amount a district can raise through property taxes — which would be the same percentage as the current budget’s growth over 2013-14. Unlike other years since the 2 percent tax cap was signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2011, the governor has not released projected state aid figures for individual districts this winter. Camhi said that the “state aid runs” are not expected before the state is required to pass its budget on April 1.

State Assemblyman Brian Curran, who represents nearly all of Baldwin, said Cuomo is withholding the state aid runs in order to get other reforms passed. “I am stunned and disappointed at the aggressiveness of the governor’s stance,” Curran said, “because our children and their futures should not be used as pawns in the Albany budget chess game.”

As of now, the district is not projecting a state aid increase for next school year. Currently, $25.2 million of the district’s budget, or roughly 20 percent, comes from state aid — a percentage, Camhi said, that is significantly smaller than decades ago.

The administrative portion of the proposed budget is likely to increase by $730,000, to $12.3 million. The main reason, Smith explained, is that the district has consolidated its supervisory positions. In years past there were 10 supervisors, or chairs, at the middle and high school levels, each overseeing one of the five main subjects. Now there are five supervisors, each of whom oversees a subject for grades six through 12. But they now teach fewer than three classes, which means their pay gets shifted to the administrative side of the proposed budget.