School district facing tough budget choices

Rockville Centre school district administrators say they are working to develop a 2010-11 spending plan to keep the increase in school spending as low as possible, without affecting education programs. They are starting with a year-to-year percentage increase of just under 4 percent over the current spending plan.

“The state just hamstrings us with guidelines and rules we need to follow,” said Robert Bartels, the school district’s assistant superintendent for business. “But one of its rules does allow school districts to increase their budgets if they have the sort of unanticipated contingent expenses that we’ve been experiencing.”

Bartels explained that the Rockville Centre school district has been hit with a number of such expenses this year, including the MTA payroll tax, garbage pickup that the village used to provide and legal expenses from attempts to put a lid on rising special education costs.

Despite litigation, Bartels said that this school year the district has spent almost $500, 000 on expenses for the 10 high needs special education students who were new to the district — a good deal over the $295,000 that was budgeted. These expenses, he said, range from tuition to special schools and programs outside the Rockville Centre school district, transportation to and from the programs, to the $90,000-a-year full-time private nurse one student requires. Based on kindergarten registration, Bartels said the district anticipates a number of additional high needs special ed students enrolling next year.

The money for the extra expenses has been coming from the fund balance of undesignated reserves the district keeps for true unanticipated expenditures, such as shortfalls in revenue and other expenses, and for maintaining the cash flow needed so as not to increase borrowing costs. More money in that fund balance, Bartels said, helps keep the tax levy down.

Attorneys have told the school district that it may be able to increase its 2009-10 spending plan — with no impact to the current tax levy — to include these unanticipated contingent expenditures, Bartels said. Through a combination of adding these unanticipated increases to the current year's spending plan and reductions in the spending plan being developed, Bartels said he hopes to reach the just-under 4 percent increase that the board has asked to see.

In remarks during the Feb. 2 school board meeting, Board of Education President Mark Masin urged all members of the school district’s population to make their feelings known about the proposed budget that will be developed during the next few weeks, and presented for a May 18 vote. He said he believes nothing should be more important than the education of the children of Rockville Centre — and that is what makes the community special.

"Whether you have children in the schools, are empty nesters, have children attending private or parochial schools,” Masin said, “now is the time to remember that we are educating our most important commodity — the kids of the entire district.

“The process starts tonight,” Masin said at the meeting, the first of several budget workshops the Board of Education has scheduled. “This board wants to hear from a true cross-section of the public. Not only will we be listening to those of you who come to the microphone, but also those we speak to while we’re out in the community, those we see in the schools, meet on the soccer fields and community events and those that send letters and emails.”

Masin said the budget will come down to a question of community choice.

In his remarks, school Superintendent Dr. William Johnson reminded the audience that the spending plan adopted by the school board is different from the eventual tax levy, in which state aid is a key piece. Johnson said he fears that the state aid figures, along with the entire state budget, are likely to be late this year, due to the acrimonious atmosphere in Albany.

In addition to directing the administration to develop a spending plan with a maximum 4 percent increase, the school board also asked for a look at what a contingent budget would or would not include. This year that spending plan, mandated if the community defeats budgets that are presented, would consist of a 0 percent increase from the current budget.

Masin speculated that a spending plan with a 4 percent increase would necessitate a reduction of $1.5 million, forcing options that might include changes in class cap sizes, reducing 20 staff members from throughout the district and holding the line on all salaries. A spending plan with a 0 percent increase might necessitate a $5 million reduction from this year’s budget that Masin said could result in “wholesale cuts of approximately 55 staff members, reductions in interscholastic athletics, performing arts and foreign language.

“This would have disastrous consequences not only for the education that our children receive," he said, "but it [would also be] reflected in our overall community. Home values, civic pride, a well rounded education all would suffer. It would take years to come out from under the stigma of a contingent budget.”

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