by Thaddeus Flint
The runaway train that is the Berlin Central School District budget continued its journey this Tuesday towards its unknown fate. Last week we saw its passengers, the School Board and the Interim Superintendent Dr. Brian Howard, agreeing that the way things were now they were heading towards disaster – disaster being an 8.3 percent increase in the tax levy with a contingency budget of an 8.3 percent increase in the tax levy. A rare consensus was formed; something had to be done! But what?
“This Board faces an extremely difficult situation,” Dr. Howard said when opening the meeting, “and no decisions have been made.” Well, there are still 21 days left until April 12, the day by which the budget must finalized. The Board has some time left to make decisions. But this is important to remember – nobody is saying that this is the final budget yet. The proposals made are just that, proposals.
The Board closed its meeting last week agreeing that more and/or different cuts need to be made to the proposed budget for the 2011 -2012 school year, a budget now of $18,137,368. Board members’ opinions on what next year’s school tax levy should increase by ranged from 0 % to as much as 4 %.
So Howard went back and looked at the budget some more. What else could they cut? Already they had proposed the elimination of 5 teaching assistants; an extremely painful decision. Nobody enjoys laying people off. But more difficult decisions had to be made. A tax levy increase of 8.3 % was impossible for the District.
These are some of the additional items now proposed to be cut in addition to the ones proposed on March 16.
The largest single cut in this round of proposed cuts would be to the pre-k program. By changing the program from a full to a half day the District could save $114,783 (a second proposal has also been made to drop kindergarten to a half day). In response, Jane Halleck, who has taught kindergarten in the District for 23 years and who will soon be retiring, addressed the Board. “I’m fairly confident that no one here in this room or even on the Board thinks that cutting kindergarten or pre-k is a good idea.” She explained that even with a decline in instructional time children in kindergarten have improved incredibly in the past few years as a result of the pre-k program. Children in kindergarten can now read, write paragraphs and are better at math. “If you reduce instructional time to this ridiculous tiny amount,” said Halleck, “you are going to drop your achievements down drastically for every grade. It’s like dominos.”
The next largest elimination would be the position of Transportation Director. Including benefits, this costs the District $99,422 a year. At the moment the position is open. One might wonder that if the buses are still running without a Transportation Director, is one really needed? On a normal day, maybe not. But on a not so normal day you might end up with a bus driver “strike” as the District found out this winter.
One high school business teacher position could be dropped for a savings of $85,364, including benefits.
Having a middle school principal might make sense when the middle school is actually a separate school. Berlin has one building for both middle and high school. Dropping this position could save $57,670.
From BOCES, a total of $90,571 would be cut, $20,000 of it coming from staff development workshops. It would seem that teachers being teachers would now be expected to teach themselves to teach. A savings of $58,071 would come from cuts to BOCES data analysis staff.
There is a position called the Math Coordinator. Budget minus one Math Coordinator equals? The answer is $36,713 in savings.
A better rate negotiated for health insurance could save $50,000.
Junior varsity boys baseball, girls softball, boys and girls soccer and boys and girls basketball would be cut to save $19,186. The junior varsity teams would supposedly be rolled into varsity. While a student could then, in theory, be a varsity team player at only 13 years old, it is presumed that they would not get much playing time, if any, in the next three or four years. Great seats at all the games though!
All wrestling would be eliminated to save $6,412. Canceling cheerleading would save $1,235. Eliminating the Special Olympics would generate an Olympic-sized savings of $978. Eliminating the Taconican would save $1,805. What’s the Taconican? Ending the Odyssey of the Mind program would save $2,813.
The Treasurer position would be reduced by .2 for a savings of $13,657 to the treasury. A high school physical education teacher would be reduced by .6 saving $32,312. By eliminating the Substance Abuse Counselor position the District would save $36,000.
Here is an interesting item. Did you know that $34,541 a year of Berlin High School District tax revenue goes to a position of Greeter? This person sits at the door and if you knock on the door they get up and unlock the door and ask you who you are. If you come to the school brandishing, say, a machine gun, presumably the greeter would make the decision to not unlock the door. The door is mostly glass, but still. Or this position could be cut and something called a door bell installed.
So those are the first new suggestions for cuts. They total $1,626,064. Should they be adopted, taxes would actually fall by .69%. Your kids would presumably be less educated, fatter, and possibly even abusing substances without proper counseling, but the school budget would now be down to $17,385,904!
Not enough? Would you like your school taxes cut by a whopping 5.89%? That could be done too! Here’s how. Chop off one technology teacher, cut a Home & Careers teacher in half, drop kindergarten to half a day, eliminate a clerical position, the elementary music teacher, a secondary school English teacher and a secondary school Social Studies teacher, but make it all better by bringing back two sixth period classes and you now have a total savings of $2,058,382! It’s being considered.
Understandably nobody on the Board seemed happy to be faced with making these decisions. Some questioned if other areas of the budget were being overlooked at the cost of educational positions? Board Member John Nash felt that there were more cuts that could still be done to BOCES and Administration. Board Member Alan Webster, Jr. agreed. “If you are not a person instructing students…you are somebody that the District needed to take a serious look at,” he said.
Howard then pointed out that cutting administration doesn’t always lead to cost savings in the long run. He said it might make more sense to look into combining districts, perhaps with New Lebanon, for example. By combining two Superintendents of not only the schools, but of Grounds and Transportation both districts could be on to long term savings. Board Member Beverly Stewart agreed. “But one of the problems that we have is that, unfortunately, we have a bad reputation. I don’t think anyone is shocked at that,” she said.
Board Member Liz Miller said, “This is tough. We can’t make everybody happy in this. In fact were are going to make most people very upset.”
Howard’s Car Vandalized
Somebody is already very upset, upset enough to have vandalized Howard’s car after last week’s budget workshop meeting. The anger is misplaced. Howard works for the School Board. He does what they tell him to do, and the School Board is asking Howard to look for cuts because the State of New York cut $679,489 in funding.
On a happier note the meeting closed with the Board agreeing unanimously to a decision. It was decided that the voting for the school budget should be returned to Berlin Elementary School instead of holding it at the fire hall. Voters will now be able to see one of the schools they are paying for. The children will get to see the voting process. The date is Tuesday, May 17. Voters should stay clear of any chipping paint which might contain lead.