by Alex Brooks
Hoosick Falls School district released the first draft of its budget for the 2017-2018 school year at its February 16 meeting. The budget proposes an increase in spending of 2.5% or $595,829, which brings total annual spending to $24,148,744.[private]
Although Governor Cuomo said he was increasing education funding by a billion dollars, or over 4%, when he unveiled his executive budget, somehow not much of that will go to the Hoosick Falls District. The budget presented by HFCS Business Manager shows an increase in State aid of just 0.4%, or $40,000. In addition, the District proposes to apply less of its fund balance to next year’s budget. Last year they applied $2 million from the fund balance, and the first draft budget shows only $1.75 million from fund balance applied to the budget. This means that the District will need to find $250,000 in either new revenue or cost savings to cover that change.
There are some aspects of the budget that are trending in a positive direction this year. Health insurance, which has often risen by enormous sums from year to year, is projected to increase by just 1.1% this year. The District’s contributions to the State teacher retirement system, which have been increasing in most recent years, will be going down this year, from 11.72% of payroll to 9.8% of payroll. This will result in an estimated savings of $177,246. And finally, costs for transportation and utilities are expected to be $166,500 lower thanks to lower costs of energy, including diesel fuel for the buses and heating oil to heat the building.
The budget presented included a number of additions to the staffing and program costs of the District. The District proposes to hire 5 new teacher aides, one teacher assistant, and one full-time maintenance position. All of these new hires together will cost $283,734 additional.
The other big addition is to add vocational training at the Vermont Career Development Center in Bennington. Superintendent Facin said it is essential for the District to have a robust vocational education component to its program. “We need it for a certain contingent of kids.” He said the goal is to have everyone graduate, and for some kids who might otherwise drop out, the vocational program gives them a way to be successful. Facin said the Hoosick Falls District will have 22 slots for its students at the Vermont CDC. They have worked out the scheduling so that kids can go to the vocational program for a half day and still have lunch at Hoosick Falls, and get back in time for after school activities and sports. The vocational program at the Vermont CDC will add $264,878 to the budget.
There were a few small program additions as well. Additional components to the District’s social-emotional learning program were budgeted at $12,000, and adding riflery and cross country running to the athletic programs were budgeted at $18,000.
The net result of all of this is that the increase in the tax levy in this first draft budget is shown as 9.68%, although no one had any intention of passing a budget with such a high tax levy increase. Facin said “We know what the expectations are. We will get this increase down by the time of the final budget.”
State aid almost always increases when the legislature passes a budget in April. It remains to be seen what other measures may be needed to bring the tax levy increase down by the time a final budget is presented. Facin did say he is nervous about the District’s Title 1 funding. These are grants to the District from the Federal government that amount to several hundred thousand dollars annually, and if they are cut back or no longer indexed to poverty as some in the Congress and the new administration have proposed, the Hoosick Falls District could lose a significant piece of its revenue. The District gets Federal commitments on these grants by summer, but it would not have firm answers on Title 1 funding until after the budget is passed in mid-May.
The meeting began with Kim Brownell and her seventh graders giving a presentation to the Board to ask permission for a seventh grade trip to Christ The King Retreat Center in Greenwich. They showed a video of the facilities and the activities offered there, which includes ropes courses, a zip line, a log ladder. Several of the seventh graders spoke to the Board about the trip, speaking with great aplomb despite being nervous about speaking to the Board and the crowd in the room. They said the purpose of the trip was to learn teamwork and trust through challenging group activities. There will be a no cell phone policy during the trip so that the kids can stay focused on the team-building activities. The trip is planned for May 23 and 24. It will cost $450 per person, which includes four meals and one night overnight accommodations. The Board enthusiastically approved the trip.
There was also a presentation by the Hoosick Falls Cyber-Panthers, which is the robotics team, with their advisor Anthony Malikowski. The team got a $2,000 grant from iDesign Solutions to cover purchasing the equipment and materials they needed to build the robot. They used equipment from VEX robotics. Malikowski said there are ten different motors on the team’s robot, and of course making it work well involves complicated design and coding work.
The team has been quite successful, making the quarterfinals at their first competition, competing agains forty other teams. They showed a video of their robot winning one of its matches, and did a live demonstration for the Board, in which the robot picked up objects and moved them from place to place.
In other business, the Board:
• accepted a proposal for three years of external audit services from Bonadio Group (which has been doing the District’s audits for number of years). The bid was for $15,500 for this year, with a $500 increase in each of the two subsequent years.
• accepted “with deep regret” the resignation of Special Education teacher Susan Hale, for reason of retirement.
The next meeting of the Board of Education will be March 16 at 7 pm in the High School Library. [/private]