By Jacky Gerzema
The district will receive an extra $150,000 from the state for the 2002-2003 school year, bringing the total state aid to nearly $15.6 million.
Dr. Lee Chapman, deputy superintendent for administration, says that if Albany "hadn't changed the rules," the district should have received in the neighborhood of $700,000 extra from the state this year, or about one percent of its total $70 million budget.
"The games are on in Albany," said Chapman.
This year, the state instituted "flex aid," which is supposed to give districts more room to spend their money, said Chapman. While the flex aid as a concept is good, the state essentially tied school district's hands by lumping several types of aid into one category and capping the amount, according to Chapman. To make matters worse, Baldwin schools will not receive transportation aid, and textbook aid is frozen.
"Right now, the flex aid does not give us more money than we would normally be entitled to, so we are working with basically the same amount of funds, but increased expenses," Chapman said.
The governor's budget projections are preliminary numbers and must go through both the Senate and Assembly before they are finalized.
In the past, Chapman said that the district always expected to get more money than the governor initially projected, until last year.
For the first time, the governor's preliminary figure was the amount the district actually received, Chapman said. Therefore, the tax rate was not reduced in August as it had been done in previous years.
Because of the recession and post-Sept. 11 fiscal fallout, Chapman said he is "not confident at all" about the district's prospect of getting a bump in aid when all is said and done.
Chapman also said that Albany has "changed the rules" when it comes to building aid.
Baldwin had three existing building bonds: one for the high school in 1994; one for facilities in 1997 and the middle school in 1999. The district was slated to get $1.4 million in building aid next year, but will receive only $891,000 of that due to a new formula adopted last year in the bare bones budget.
Under the formula, Albany placed all existing bonds on a state amortization schedule which spreads out the payments for more years than the school district originally sold the bonds for, Chapman said. While this helps the state with its cash flow, it will hurt the district by a significant amount next year. Under the new change in law, Baldwin will receive $326,700 less in building aid.
"This will have a negative effect on local taxpayers," said Chapman. "It doesn't look good."
The Board of Education will be holding budget deliberations in February and March.
"The Board will discuss programs and revenues in budget discussions," Chapman said. "They will make the final decision on what we keep, what we expand, what we change, or what we eliminate in the budget process."
