The South Colonie School District looked to get an early start on budgeting for the 2015-16 school year, but the efforts were delayed.
At the South Colonie Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 6, Assistant Superintendent for Management Services and Strategic Planning Sherri Fisher reported on early budget developments for the district. However, much of the early planning was delayed due to the passing of former state governor Mario Cuomo, which in turn delayed Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2015 State of the State address.
The address precedes the governor’s proposal, detailing revenue numbers integral to planning school district budgets. Both will now be delivered late January.
“There won’t be any solid revenue numbers until the governor’s proposal in late January,” said Fisher. Though, the district is moving along in putting together contractual and other expenditure information.
Less pension money
Meanwhile, pension contributions for the Teachers’ and Employees’ Retirement Systems are declining. Fisher said that those contributions had been a large burden on the district’s budget “in terms of paying those employer contribution rates.”
“The rates are going down in both systems, which will save us a fairly significant amount of money,” she said.
Fisher projected that the property tax levy limit will fall around 2 percent or below due to a low rate of inflation.
Early bad news
The news, however, was not all good. Fisher said that while the state economy showed signs of improvement, meaning the state comptroller would be considering gap eliminations for schools, South Colonie would still receive less in state aid.
“That’s good news in terms of bringing up some of those funds to restore gap elimination adjustment, but we’re not in the category to get the same amount,” said Fisher. “We are getting $2.5 million less than we got six years ago in 2008-09. So we would really need for that gap elimination adjustment to be fully restored.”
To balance some of that debt, the district should be receiving additional special education funding due to current additional outside placements this year. At a meeting this week, officials discussed programming for students both in and outside of the schools for the next school year.
The first public forum regarding budgeting topics will be held Tuesday, Feb. 10, touching on transportation, operation and maintenance, and secure youth detention facility issues at the district office at 102 Loralee Drive. On Tuesday, March 17, the first draft of the budget will be presented.
Student honored
The Board of Education also honored Lisha Kill Middle School eighth-grader Jacob Haley for his anti-bullying efforts.
Haley was awarded the President’s Spotlight from Board of Education president Tim Ryan. He was also given a Albany County District proclamation from District Attorney David Soares. Haley was the first WORDS anti-bullying campaign monthly winner this past October.
Haley created rubber wristbands that read “Stop Bullying. The damage is infinite,” which he passed to about 100 of his peers at the middle school. He used his own experiences of being bullied on bus rides to come up with the idea.
“It is easy, once you are a victim of (bullying), and no one would blame you as a victim of crime, if you decided to do nothing about it and continue to experience bullying. However, I believe it takes a special kind of person to actually, as a victim, take what has been given to him and then search for ways of addressing it and preventing it from happening to other people,” said Soares.
Soares created the WORDS campaign in October to promote “Random Acts of Kindness” in order to prevent bullying. Students from district schools submit their ideas to the District Attorney’s office for a weekly contest, and then district residents vote at the end of each month to decide a monthly winner.
Soares presented both Haley and Lisha Kill principal David Wetzel with the proclamation of recognition on behalf of Albany County.
“He made outstanding progress in eliminating bullying and spreading kindness in the community,” said Soares. “Jacob Haley strived to improve Lisha Kill and partook in random acts of kindness.”
