As budget discussions continue for Bethlehem schools, district officials were recently notified that program tuition charges from BOCES would be significantly increasing for the coming year.
Superintendent Tom Douglas said the district is now calculating what the impact will be for Bethlehem schools. An initial estimate found the increase could be as much as $300,000. Douglas said they are evaluating alternatives.
“This increase was not expected,” said Douglas on Wednesday, March 19.
The additional costs come at a time when the district is facing a more than $4.8 million budget gap. The district now estimates Bethlehem will only receive about $1 million in state aid. Another $1.9 million would be raised if the school board put forward the maximum allowable tax levy of 3.12 percent. The district has about $1.75 million in fund balance reserves it can use to offset costs for the coming year, according to District Business Officer Judi Kehoe.
The same night, both the Operations and Maintenance Department and the Athletics Department presented their budgets for the coming year.
New Athletic Director Len Kies said he was proposing no changes for the coming year, with the only budgetary increase being for officials fees, tournament fees, professional services and pay for trainers. The district has 75 sports teams between the modified, freshman, junior varsity and varsity levels.
Kies said if cuts were needed, he would look to reduce the number of levels from four to three. Although it costs relatively little to pay for a sports team compared with the rest of the budget, Kies said Section II is one of the few in the state to still have freshman level sports teams.
“As an educator, I think having modified is imperative,” said Kies. “Community teams are great, but there’s a difference between learning to represent your school and be a part of a team.”
Board member Joann Cunningham said she was worried about eliminating a level because if those kids are unable to make a junior varsity team, it is unlikely they would try out for sports the next year.
“I would want to be really thoughtful when working through that,” she said. “When they’re gone, they’re gone.”
Kies said if there was any money that could be put back into programs, he’d like some money to go back to hockey, golf, gymnastics or bowling. All those sports are being supported by booster clubs. Board members said many of the district’s sports are being supported by booster clubs and they have to be careful about picking who gets money put back in the budget. Kies said those sports were picked because the boosters pay the rental fees for the competition space.
“A golf green is like a basketball court or baseball diamond. Without those items, they couldn’t play,” Kies said.
Operations and Maintenance Director Gregg Nolte said his main budget-to-budget increase would be for contractual raises in salaries and supplies.
The department has been seeing a large decrease in utility costs because of a newer contract with BOCES, which allows all 500 districts participating to be able to bid for utilities at one entity. With the projected amount of money to be saved next year from that contract, the department’s budget would only increase about $11,000
“It takes some guess work, but the costs keep coming down so we are projecting the same for next year,” said Nolte, although the contract will expire in April 2015 and will need to be re-negotiated if the Board opts to do so.
Nolte did propose an additional $175,000 in equipment purchases. The list included 10 items such as two vans, a light duty plow and two new scrubber units for the janitorial staff. “No new equipment or vehicles have been purchased from our department since 2008-09, so this is the list of things that could be replaced,” he said, adding that the equipment is aging and costing more to repair as time goes by.
Some board members felt budget presentations were going in the wrong direction as costs increased and department heads asked for more purchases to be made.
“Every reduction is eclipsed by put backs,” said board member Charmaine Wijeyesinghe. “Right now anything people put up as an addition, I’m putting on a list to the side.”