by Alex Brooks
At a “Round Table” meeting of the Berlin School Board on Thursday February 4, Dr. Stephen Young, Superintendent of the Berlin School District, gave the Board and the public a first look at the budget picture for the District.
[private]While the budget for next year is still in the early stages of formulation, Young sketched out what a “roll-over” budget would look like. This is a budget in which all the budget lines are the same as last year, but contractual increases in salary and benefits are added in, and previously unbudgeted unavoidable anticipated expenditures are added in, but no changes in academic program, staff, or operations and maintenance are made. The projected budget assumes that the District will use the same amount as last year ($573,806) from this year’s fund balance toward next year’s expenses, and none of the District’s reserves would be used to put extra money into the budget. Such a budget for the upcoming year would come to $19,664,014, which is an increase of $564,023 over the current year’s budget, which is $19,099,991. This would be a budget to budget increase of 2.95%.
Young said the Governor’s budget would give the Berlin District an increase in State aid revenue of $185,468, and the tax cap allows the District to increase the tax levy by 0.59%, which brings an additional $52,000. So the increase in revenue would be a total of $237,700, and there would be a shortfall of $326,324.
Dr. Young said, “I feel confident that number will be relatively easy to reach.” He said if the legislature were to completely eliminate the Gap Elimination Adjustment, and Young thought that is likely to happen, that would bring over $200,000 additional dollars to the Berlin District next year. He also said he is expecting some retirements which will lower the District’s costs for salaries by as much as $200,000. Another thing working in the District’s favor is the lower cost of heating oil and diesel fuel.
Young said some of the numbers they are working with are still in flux, and the question of whether the District will make any changes to its staffing or program will be taken up later in the budget process, but the budget he laid out this week will serve as the starting point for such discussions.
Board discussion then turned to the direction of the District for the future. Young presented a list of positions he would like to fund in future budgets. The highest priority was to have a Director of Curriculum and Instruction, which he sees as the key to developing an improved academic program in the future. Another position he mentioned was Chief Information Officer. This is primarily about providing information about the District’s operations required by the State. This job is currently taking up about 20% of the time of High School Principal Cathie Allain, which she feels is a distraction from her focus on the students. The other two positions mentioned were a technology specialist and network engineer, which is increasingly important as more technology is incorporated into the academic program, and Instructional Technology Specialists, which Young said was important, because in order to access the Smart Schools grant money, the District needs personnel support for technology in the school. Clearly some of these positions could be combined, at least initially, and it may be that through some kind of reorganization, the District could handle some of these duties with existing staff, or at least with existing budget lines.
The presentation led to a wide-ranging discussion of the school’s organizational structure, and a look at the organizational structure of several neighboring Districts. One of the fundamental problems for the Berlin District is that of increasing staff positions at a time when enrollment is shrinking.
School Board President Frank Zwack said he feels it is important to fund a Director of Curriculum and Instruction, and perhaps to cover some of the other duties mentioned by Young through a staff reorganization, but he felt it would require careful study and shouldn’t be done in haste. “We’re at a crossroads now, and we need to look carefully at the structure of our District,” said Zwack.
Some seemed to feel that trying to make provisions for these new positions is not feasible for the coming year’s budget, which must be completed in the next two months, but that the Board should be thinking about it for the following year’s budget.[/private]