by Thaddeus Flint
In the Superintendent’s report at Tuesday’s Berlin School Board meeting, Berlin Central School District Superintendent Dr. Stephen Young made special mention of an upcoming event titled “New York schools STILL in fiscal peril: Our kids can’t wait another year”. This will be a regional call to action of 47 school districts from the area to discuss what’s known as the Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA).
[private]The GEA was introduced by former Governor David Patterson in 2010 as a means of propping up a $10 billion budget deficit by reducing Foundation Aid to school districts. This was supposed to be temporary, and federal stimulus money initially helped Districts offset losses of State Aid.
Four years later the “temporary” GEA is still here. Unfortunately for school districts, the federal stimulus followed the rules of actually being temporary and is over. Districts are tasked with making up the shortfalls themselves. The problem? In the meantime, current Governor Andrew Cuomo came up with a plan to keep property taxes somewhat stable through the 2% tax cap. While that’s good for property owners, it’s not all that good for many school districts, and, for some, it’s downright disastrous.
New York State’s Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli seems to have noticed. On January 16 his office reported that 87 school districts in the State “have been designated as fiscally stressed.” The Berlin District is one of those 87. “School districts are a critical barometer to the fiscal health of our local communities,” said DiNapoli. “Unfortunately, reductions in State aid, a cap on local revenue and decreased rainy day funds are creating financial challenges that more and more school districts are having trouble overcoming. My office’s fiscal stress scores highlight the need for school district officials to manage their finances carefully with an eye towards long range planning and how they can operate more efficiently.”
The phrase “manage their finance carefully,” might come as an insult to many school administrators. Many districts, including BCS, are operating on bare bones budgets as it is. Perhaps the officials who should be managing the finances more carefully are those who actually control the finances.
“Over the past four years, The GEA has cost the Berlin Central School District $5,592,390,” said Young. That’s an enormous amount of money for a small school district. And it could be part of the reason for BCS ending up on the fiscally distressed list.
BCS is actually #68 of the 87 on the list, so the District is most likely not in the “peril” that will be discussed at the upcoming fiscal peril event. BCS had a fiscal score of 28.3%. This rates it as being “susceptible to fiscal stress.” The larger the fiscal score number the worse off a District is. Watervliet City School District, with a fiscal score of 88%, is #1 on the list, rated as having “significant fiscal stress.”
It was hoped that Governor Cuomo would have some good news for school districts when his budget was announced Tuesday, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Cuomo plans a measly 4% increase to school aid, around $800 million, and did nothing about eliminating the “temporary” GEA.
Thus the reason for the “New York schools STILL in fiscal peril” conference. “This is an opportunity for our community to make a real impact not only for our schools, but for public education across New York State,” wrote Dr. Young in a release on the District’s website. “Last year’s event and the subsequent advocacy efforts made by parents, students and community members helped convince elected officials in Albany to restore some of the cuts to school aid funding. We hope to continue those efforts this year.”
The event will be held at Colonie Central High School on January 30 at 6:30 pm. Those wishing to attend or who would like further information should contact the Superintendent’s office for further details.
Electricity Costs Going Through The Roof
With worries like these, it’s no wonder that BCS is trying to keep track of every dollar. The District’s Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds, Cyril Grant, reported that the new boilers at the High School/Middle School are up and “running very well.” So that’s a plus over the old inefficient ones they replaced. However the cost of electricity is going through the roof.
Grant noted that a woman in Grafton was seen on TV telling a local news channel that she opened her electric bill and found that her costs had skyrocketed in one month. The same happened when Grant saw the electric bills for the District. For all the buildings, the bill was “over $6,000 more last month than the previous month,” he said. For the High School/Middle School alone, the November bill of around $5,500 had climbed to “over $9,000 in December.” Grant said he is currently studying solar options for the building’s roof but nothing can be done until after the existing roof is replaced this summer.
Fiscally susceptible to stress, or not, the Board is still looking at spending money in technology, transportation and maybe even social media.
The District’s Business Manager, Karen Capozzi, in the first of probably many pre-budget planning presentations, presented suggestions for updating some buses with security cameras, modernizing the bus garage and implementing a plan to replace aging buses with new ones. The idea is to work out a schedule of fleet replacement over a period of time so as to not stress the finances of the District by having to purchase a large number of vehicles all at once.
Capozzi also provided estimates for the future year in technology spending. There could be an increase by as much as 71% in contractual expenses, around $25,000, for technology updates. This used to be handled and financed under Questar, but that will no longer be the case going forward. A large part of these expenses would be from updating and verifying the security of the District’s IT platform.
“We haven’t done this since 2009,” explained Dr. Young. “Five or six years, that’s not enough,” voiced Board Member Jeff Paine, who pointed out that technology is changing much faster than that. “Seventy-one per cent added to a budget item,” warned Board President Frank Zwack, “that can throw us out of whack.”
Capozzi pointed out that the estimate she provided was a high number. She expects the actual cost to be lower.
“Basically you are paying for a hacker to come in and break into your system,” said Zwack. Zwack is, however, in favor of allocating funds toward the technology of social media. He’s pointed out before that the District is, in effect, a multi-million dollar enterprise and yet it does very little when it comes to public relations. “The bulk of the taxpayers have no idea what’s going on in the District,” said Zwack, “and they control the purse strings.”
The District does have a decent website which is useful for parents and students to keep up to date with the latest happenings in the schools, but it’s doubtful the rest of residents visit it very often if at all. Social media would bring the school’s message to the people, perhaps through Facebook and Twitter, without residents having to search and see if there is any message at all. But therein lies the problem – someone has to prepare the message.
One would think that in a school full of teachers and students someone could be found to put that message together. Someone is in fact already doing a pretty good job of it with the “Berlin Banner,” a newsletter which can found on the District’s website. But the Board seems to be leaning more toward having someone from Questar come in once a week, dig up the message, process it and shoot it off to the masses. This would cost around $9,000 for a half year.
Zwack said it was important to get out “the right story” instead of “rumors that discredit the staff and students.”
Young was slightly more hesitant about moving forward so quickly. Social media is a two-way street, he said. People respond to it and not always in the way the sender would like. “Someone has to oversee that social media,” he said. “In corporate America there are whole departments just for social media.”
Round Table Discussion With The Public
The next regular Board meeting will be held Tuesday, February 25. Before that, on February 6, there will be a round table meeting that Dr. Young would like to be used as an information session to get ideas from the public on opening up the facilities more for the community. A press release with further information will be sent out in the next couple of weeks and will also be posted at the District’s website at www.Berlincentral.org.[/private]