HFCS Draft Budget Trims $1 Million And Eliminates 12 Teaching Positions

by Alex Brooks
The Hoosick Falls School District presented a first draft of its budget for the 2011-12 school year at its regular monthly meeting last week. It’s a difficult year because stimulus funds are phasing out and State aid is being cut significantly at the same time.
On the plus side, though, the Federal government approved an Education Jobs bill late last summer, which will deliver $489,000 to the Hoosick Falls District, and that money is to be used for the 2011-12 budget year.
The budget presented shows that State Aid for operating expenses will be 5.1% less than this year, which means $443,385 less in revenue, and that costs for health insurance and retirement contributions are both up significantly. Superintendent Ken Facin said if the District tried to just roll over the budget and maintain the same program resources as this year, they would have to increase the local tax levy by over 20%. Instead, the proposed budget contains a 24 point savings plan which trims over a million dollars from the budget and eliminates 12 teaching positions. The resulting budget still shows an 8.7% tax levy increase. The Board and the administration expect to whittle down that figure, but exactly how much more savings will be achieved and how they will be achieved remains to be seen. The District is offering a retirement incentive, and if some senior teachers take advantage of it, there could be additional savings there.
Prior to presenting the list of staff and program reductions, the Elementary Principal and the High School Principal presented their plans for the upcoming year to emphasize that this is an attempt to be creative about doing more with less, rather than just chopping budgets.
High School Principal Stacy Vadney said they are moving to an 8 period schedule to reduce the number of study halls needing staff coverage.  They are moving more students from IEP certificates to diplomas. She noted that an IEP certificate doesn’t get you into the military or college, and a student who can get a regular diploma shouldn’t settle for less. They also are moving special education students who can handle it from the segregated special education classes into regular classes, with appropriate support. Because of this, next year there will be only two sections of the segregated special education classes rather than three.
Vadney said the High School will be maintaining its diverse offerings of AP and college level courses, and its wide variety of extracurricular and club activities. She said there will be an increase in class sizes of about two to five more students per class. She noted that class size has much less impact on student success than the quality of the teacher.
How To Save $1 Million
The District plans a $25,000 reduction in Curriculum Development, a $9,400 reduction in the budget for teachers to go to conferences, a $12,000 reduction in the budget for supplies, a $3,000 reduction in In-Service and Staff Development funds. They plan to postpone purchases of SmartBoards and replacement furniture that were planned for this year, which eliminates $81,000 from next year’s budget. They will eliminate the morning child care program in the elementary school, which had only a small number of kids using it, at a savings of $15,486. They will eliminate the Head Custodian position left vacant when John Nealon retired and Paul Baker became Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds, a savings of $74,000. They will abolish the position of Student Assistance Counselor, saving $34,800. They will eliminate the District-wide newsletters sent through BOCES, saving $35,000. They will eliminate the NYSARC program and the Academic Tutorial program, bringing savings of $40,000 and $38,00 respectively.
The Superintendent and administrators have agreed to a salary freeze and reduction of certain stipends, which brings a total savings of $44,000.
The District will eliminate two teaching assistant positions, one who retired and one which will be paid by the Universal Pre-K grant, saving $43,690. Three Special Education teachers will be cut, saving $186,747, and a half time Speech teacher, a half time Teacher of the Deaf and a half time English as a Second Language teacher will be discontinued. Savings from all three is $93,000.
Two elementary teachers and an elementary AIS teacher will be cut, which cuts $148,000 from the budget. And finally, a Spanish teacher, a Business teacher and a Social Studies teacher, all full-time, who were paid with Federal stimulus money, will be eliminated, as planned when they were hired. This cuts about $160,000 from the budget.
Superintendent Facin said that everybody who works at the school has value, and there is always a loss to the school when positions are eliminated, but he feels that despite these cutbacks, he is confident the school will still be able to continue the progress it has made in recent years with student results. He said the preliminary budget “is a very fluid document,” which will evolve as the Board and the administration get deeper into the budget process.
Board President David Sutton said the School Board would be glad to have input from the public on the budget, especially on the specific questions of what would be an acceptable tax levy increase and in what areas people feel more cuts could be made.
Junior Prom Plans Set
There was a presentation from the student committee that has been making arrangements for the Junior Prom. It will be held at the Desmond on May 21. The Grand March will be 4-5:30 at the school, then prom-goers will board buses to arrive at the Desmond for a 7 pm dinner. Buses coming back will leave the Desmond at 12:30 am. At that point the students will board buses to go to “After-Prom” activities, but the details of that trip will be presented next month. Tickets for the prom will cost $50.
The Senior Trip is planned for Friday and Saturday June 3 and 4 to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania. Tickets will be $180.
Changing The Culture
The School Youth Summit Team, now 20 members strong, made a presentation to the Board conveying the results of community surveys on alcohol and substance abuse. These surveys have been done every two years since 2002, so there is now a significant library of data for the Hoosick community. The presentation highlighted significant reductions in use of alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana in Hoosick over the period from 2006 to 2010 and a lowering of community tolerance for underage drinking. Years of effort by the Hoosick Area Partnership for Parents and Youth, now merged with the Youth Center to become the Hoosick Area Youth Center & Community Coalition (HAYC3), is changing the culture. The Hoosick area, which used to have one of the highest rates of underage drinking in Rensselaer County, now has one of the lowest.  The school has also been a major contributor to this effort. One of the highlights of the presentation was perception of increased “pro-social opportunities” at the school, up over 30% over the last four years. The Youth Summit Team itself is more evidence of the school’s participation in the community partnership. Members of the team described the activities they undertake to raise awareness of substance abuse issues. After the presentation, Superintendent Facin said to the team, “Thank you for your courage and your commitment to living alcohol and drug  free.”
HAYC3 Executive Director Aelish Nealon said the full survey results are posted on the Youth Center’s web site, if anyone would like to delve deeper into the subject.
Taking Sundays Off
The question of Sunday sports practices, first raised by Don Skott at last month’s meeting, was brought to the fore again by Facin, who felt that Sunday practices are a bad idea. He feels that kids are heavily scheduled all week, and they should have some “down time.”  “The kids need a break. Sunday should be family time,” said Facin.  He found that the Board largely agreed with him.  The Board felt that team practices or other extracurricular activities should not be held on Sunday unless they got permission from the Superintendent to make an exception.
The Board accepted a bid from Bonadio Group to do the Annual Audit for 2011-12 for $15,000. Administrators were very happy with this, since they paid $28,000 for those services in this school year.
At public comment time, Bronnie Powers spoke to the Board for the second time about an incident in November between her grandchild and a teacher at the school, which she described as “bullying by a teacher.” She spoke with the Superintendent about it and said she was not satisfied with the school’s response. She felt that the teacher involved should have been fired.  Board President David Sutton said, “I have been assured that the situation has been dealt with. Action has been taken.” He said he couldn’t comment any further on the matter.
At the end of the meeting the Board went into executive session to discuss teacher contract negotiations. The Board will hold a budget work session on March 3 at 6 pm in the High School library, and the regular March meeting will be held March 17 at 7 pm in the High School cafeteria.