The Batavia City School District Board of Education tonight postponed adopting the 2020-21 budget for two weeks in anticipation of receiving word from Albany on the amount of state aid it will receive.
Over the past few weeks, district officials have had to take drastic measures to close a $1.6 million budget gap, most notably the elimination of about 30 jobs across the district. They still were about $47,000 short of reaching what is a “negative” tax cap (minus .38 percent) before making some more changes earlier today.
Those adjustments determined the tenure status of five elementary teachers who also are certified to teach reading, at a cost of $130,382, and scaled back three BOCES programs – alternative education, Instructional Support Services and model schools -- resulting in a savings of $177,649.
This enabled the district to hit the desired target, which unfortunately has been a moving target. However, with the state aid situation in flux, further financial modifications may have to be made.
Subsequently, Business Administrator Scott Rozanski recommended that the board wait until news of additional state aid adjustments and call another meeting to adopt the $51.4 million budget on May 19, two days before the deadline.
Board President Patrick Burk, mindful that district residents and media were watching the proceedings, explained how the board has reached this point.
“The current budget shows the decrease in state aid … through the budget that has been proposed to the state, which is $453,327, on top of the flat expenditure from the governor’s budget, and we have had a couple of questions that can be explained a little bit further,” he said.
Burk said the board was informed that the district would be getting an increase of $800,000 in state aid, based on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s first abstract of the budget.
“Since then … state aid is actually minus $453,327 as opposed to a plus $800,000,” he said. “On top of that, we were working with an unknown tax cap that, rightly or wrongly, the assumption in the past has at least given us some leeway in letting us raise some increase in taxation, although in our past years, it’s been relatively modest.”
He added that by the time the district’s tax cap was determined, the board “realized we were at a negative tax cap, and there goes some revenue that could possibly have been raised through the tax cap – and we ended up with a minus between $7,500 and $8,000 tax cap.”
Burk said he expects further state aid reductions that will affect the 2019-20 district budget – the first of the state’s four specified “measurement periods” is set for this month – but has not received word if any current year reductions would carry over to 2020-21. Any cuts in 2019-20 state aid would have to be made up by tapping into reserves, he said.
After that, Burk recommended that the board push the budget adoption meeting to May 19 “so we can know what the reduction will be for the current year and whether or not that is going to impact the 2020-21 year.”
His suggestion was accepted by the board.
Superintendent Anibal Soler Jr. said he agreed with the decision, adding that conversations are taking place with state education officials this week, which leads him to believe actual monetary amounts will be revealed soon.
He also mentioned the “political posturing” that is going on between the governor and President Trump in regard to the possibility of a federal stimulus bill to support states and localities.
“The hope is that we get something, but I just want everyone to be reminded that when the new budget was proposed, there was already a pandemic adjustment line in there that literally washed itself out … if we do get a bailout, I don’t necessarily think it will help us, I hope it will,” Soler said. “But I think they already have preplanned a lot of this stuff and we’re caught in some of that political posturing that goes on.”
In other developments:
-- The board tabled decisions on a $618,000 capital project to construct an age-appropriate playground at Jackson Primary School and a singular $100,000 capital outlay project at either Jackson, Batavia High School or Batavia Middle School.
Burk said that the current playground at Jackson is for intermediate or elementary pupils, not primary, and that capital project funds can't be transferred into the general fund.
Rozanski said that the capital outlay proposal comes with a 90 percent aid appropriation, reducing the district’s final cost to $10,000. He also noted that the capital outlay program, in its fifth year, identifies one location and is completed by a general contractor.
Eventually, the board will decide on one of these three options:
-- Jackson Primary: New restroom in the gymnasium;
-- Batavia High: New stage floor and new clocks;
-- Batavia Middle: Exterior doors and landscaping.
-- The board did approve taking $55,720 from the district’s repair reserve fund (which was at $173,782) to replace the gymnasium floor at the high school, a move that followed a public hearing at which no public comments were submitted.
Rozanski said the work will level the gym floor and eliminate the “dead spots.”
-- Burk said the budget vote and school board election will be done totally by a mail-in ballot, with postage paid envelopes to be mailed to district residents after May 19th and before June 9th.
Burk said it will cost $1.16 for every ballot – possibly as much as $32,000 total – since law prohibits electronic balloting. He said that the Richmond Memorial Library ballots will be included with the school’s ballots.
The board meeting took place via videoconference on the board’s website YouTube channel -- www.bataviacsd.org.
