North Colonie is set to stay within the tax cap for the 2014-15 school year without making any cuts to staff or programs with a budget projected at $101 million, an increase of $3.2 million from the previous year.
Superintendent of North Colonie Central Schools Joseph Corr presented the overview of the 2014-2015 budget to the Board of Education Monday, March 3, in the library at Shaker High School. He said the district is doing its best to maintain its staff and programs under increasingly difficult financial times due to declining state aid.
“If we are going to continue to live up to our ideal of not laying off our fellow colleagues, we must look carefully at every opportunity to realize savings through attrition or declining enrollment while simultaneously maintaining programs, opportunities for students and support for staff,” said Corr.
He said the Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA) and the tax cap have taken resources from many schools throughout the state, creating problems when it comes time to prepare the school’s budget.
Although some school funding was restored in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed budget, the amount does little to restore pre-GEA funding levels. The school expects to receive $17.5 million in state aid and use $3.7 million in reserves for the coming year.
“We had a good year last year with our fund balance, but we are starting to dip into that fund balance so we have to continue to monitor the actual use of the fund balance with eye on the fact that we are using more of our reserves than before to meet our operating expenses,” said Corr. “We need to be mindful of that.”
Last the school anticipated using $1 million from its reserves, but was able to put close to $600,000 of that money back in the reserves.
“Mr. Corr mentioned last year at this time we were forecasting a $1 million loss,” said Steven Zautner, the district business manager. “We did have a couple pieces of very good news. Keep in mind … we’re about two-thirds of the way through our fiscal year. Really, six months after the meeting tonight we’ll know what the real number is. As of today this is what we are forecasting.”
Corr stressed the importance of maintaining the district’s reserves in case of an emergency because of some hardships that have fallen on its neighbor, the Niskayuna school district. That district underwent a costly expansion that ended up going over budget. As a result, the district has had to make cuts to staffing and programs.
When the state budget was first announced, Corr railed against the continuation of the GEA.
“The vast majority of schools in the state are receiving less now than they were four or five years ago — substantially less, and that compounded with the tax cap limit that has also restricted their ability to raise revenues,” Corr said at the time.
Under the state tax cap, the yearly increase in property taxes each year for school districts and local municipalities is 2 percent, or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. Schools can exceed the cap by a supermajority vote, but then homeowners of the district will be penalized by not receiving promised tax breaks from the state.
The North Colonie School District’s 2014-15 proposed budget does not exceed the tax cap, with a tax levy of just 3.6 percent, which is a slight decrease from last year ‘s levy of 4.3 percent.
Decreasing enrollment is another way the district plans to keep costs under control. Enrollment is projected to steadily decrease over the next five years. The enrollment for this year is 5,346, which is projected to drop to 5,216 by 2017.
There are budget meetings regularly scheduled until the board votes the budget March 31. A list of times and locations of the meetings can be found at northcolonie.org
“Despite the grim statistics, we have to keep moving forward and we have to keep getting better,” said Corr. “It should be an equitable experience for all students. The stakes are high and the future of our students rides on a quality education.”