For 32 districts with defeated budgets, tough calls before June 18 revotes |
On Board Online • June 10, 2013
For 32 districts with defeated budgets, tough calls before June 18 revotes
By Cathy Woodruff
Senior writer
Reworked versions of many of the 32 school budgets rejected by voters in May will slice art and music, athletics and extra-curricular activities, kindergarten and academic enrichment in efforts to trim tax levy increases to levels more voters will accept.
While the North Babylon school district in Suffolk County will be asking voters to approve the same budget proposal on the statewide revote day of June 18, other districts contacted by On Board said they were pursuing program reductions in tandem with staff cuts. Leaders in some districts said they have reached the bottom of financial reserves that, until now, have helped to minimize program cuts and property tax hikes.
“We’ve gone through everything,” said Tupper Lake Superintendent Seth McGowan. “We’re spending our last dollars in our unemployment reserve and we’ve depleted our general fund balance. We’re left with half a percent in fund balance.”
McGowan and other school leaders told On Board that they are crossing their fingers that new reductions will be enough to satisfy voters who objected to earlier proposed tax increases, yet won’t alienate parents and others who want to maintain current offerings.
The balancing act has been especially challenging in districts like Tupper Lake, where original budget proposals sought property tax levy increases above the state cap, triggering the need for a 60 percent supermajority approval to override the cap.
“We had to cut $2.47 million” to shrink the previously proposed 9.8 percent tax levy hike to the 3.62 percent that now will be proposed, said Superintendent Geoffrey Hicks of Clarence, a Buffalo suburb. “Everything is hard when you get to this point.”
Voters defeated budgets in 21 (75 percent) of the 28 districts where proposals exceeded the cap in May – though two-thirds of those failed budgets would have passed if only a simple majority were needed for approval.
Only 1.7 percent of proposed budgets failed in districts where tax hikes would not have exceeded the cap.
That double-standard for approval – 50 percent required in some districts, 60 percent in others – produced a result colored with irony on Long Island, where every proposed budget was supported by a majority of voters in May, noted Lorraine Deller, executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association.
Under normal circumstances, Deller said, such results would have been cause for island-wide celebration. “We cannot remember a first go-around, ever, when all of the budgets were supported by a majority of voters,” she said.
Instead, boards in six Long Island districts have been revisiting their popularly supported budgets and making plans for re-votes.
Two Long Island districts will give voters a second shot at approving a budget that raises the tax levy beyond the cap, hoping that awareness of the high stakes for students will inspire greater positive turnout.
In Manhasset, where 53 percent voted “yes” in May, the tax levy increase is being trimmed to 1.97 percent through staff cuts and other steps. Because that remains above the 0.15 percent cap for the district, the budget still will need a supermajority to pass.
In North Babylon, where 54 percent voted “yes” in May, the same budget will be on the ballot in June because of encouragement from parents and others in the community.
Paring the North Babylon budget to meet the cap would have meant reducing a 3.4 percent tax levy increase to 2.65 percent, and Superintendent Patricia Godek said district residents have shown little support for that route.
“We have rallied the troops,” she said. “We should not be dismantling education. We should be building for the future.”
PTAs are mobilizing, and an informational campaign is planned, Godek said.
The proposed North Babylon budget begins to restore previously cut positions, which will help reduce and stabilize class sizes. The budget also maintains new security staff at elementary schools, addresses technological and building maintenance needs and maintains popular music and athletic programs, she said.
Godek attributes the failure of the first vote to a bit of complacency: “I think people thought it was a good budget. I think people generally assumed it would pass.”
But in Sachem, where the May proposal for a 7.49 percent levy increase also drew more-than 54 percent support, the board crafted a revised budget with $6.8 million in additional cuts to meet a 3.14 percent cap.
The new Sachem budget cuts full-day kindergarten to a half-day and eliminates close to 230 staff positions throughout the district, said School Board President Robert Scavo.
Scavo said the board did not dare take a chance on making lesser cuts and failing again to reach the supermajority vote needed.
“If it fails, we’re left with nothing,” he said. “If our budget is defeated again, we lose all of our music programs, our entire sports program …. We’d have no kindergarten at all. We risk losing everything, and it was a risk our board and our district did not want to take.”
Sachem’s employee bargaining units have accepted pay freezes and other concessions, Scavo said, and until last year, when voters approved an increase that exceeded the cap, tax levy increases had averaged 1.9 percent over seven years.
Reserve funds that previously helped Sachem sustain programs and keep tax increases modest are depleted, he said, and district leaders were dismayed by this year’s state aid increase of just $312,000 (0.29 percent) compared with an average of 5.1 percent on Long Island.
“It’s a sad state of affairs,” said Scavo.
Erie County’s Clarence is among the toughest budget battlegrounds this year. Community discourse has been heated and harsh.
Clarence also had largely managed to avoid steep tax hikes and deep program cuts with help from reserves, but voters turned out in record numbers to oppose a spending plan with a 9.8 percent tax levy hike in May. Less than 42 percent voted “yes.”
“Our problem was not a spending problem,” said Hicks, the Clarence superintendent. The May budget would have raised spending by just 1.4 percent over the current year, and even though the new proposed budget is lower than this year, he said, it still drives a 2.36 percent tax levy increase.
Clarence will cut more than 50 positions, which will require teacher and administrator layoffs and lead to larger class sizes, Hicks said. Freshman and modified team sports will be reduced, and opportunities to participate in music ensembles will be limited.
Board members who endured public hostility centered on proposed tax hikes in Clarence and other communities now are hearing from upset residents dismayed by newly proposed cuts.
“You’ve cut from the core of who we are,” one parent wailed at a recent Clarence meeting covered by the Buffalo News.
Tupper Lake’s May budget called for an 8.35 percent tax levy increase, which was above the 4.76 percent cap – but less than half of what would have been needed to carry current staff and programs forward, said McGowan, the superintendent. The annual cost would have been 57 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation, or $40 on a typical home valued at $70,000.
To reach the new proposed levy increase of 3.76 percent, Tupper Lake’s planned job cuts now include the departing school psychologist, who will not be replaced, McGowan said, “though we know our students are coming in with greater emotional and social needs every year.”
Tupper Lake students turned out to protest the likely layoff of a social studies teacher, which also is part of the planned elimination of seven positions. The district expects to cut field trips, activities and junior varsity sports teams, elective offerings including home and career skills classes, and academic assistance for struggling students, McGowan said.
Scarsdale, in Westchester County, is trimming $1.4 million from its May budget to pull it below the tax cap threshold. Newfound savings and $100,000 more from a fund balance helped to meet that goal.
Lower special education expenses will save $250,000 and a better deal on life insurance will save $136,500 in Scarsdale. A $160,000 asbestos removal project will be deferred, and spending on teacher enrichment and support staff will be reduced.
Niskayuna’s June budget proposal reflects $630,000 in new cuts and $300,000 in new revenue to pull the plan below the tax cap. Spending reductions include $200,000 from ending the district’s busing program and outsourcing transportation.
But Tupper Lake’s McGowan cautioned against assumptions that June budgets will pass, simply because they now will be below the tax cap.
“I don’t think anybody takes anything for granted at this stage,” he said.