John Purcell, 03/03/11
Field trips and summer school face elimination, along with staff reductions
Scotia-Glenville Central School District
officials are hoping to maintain programs for students while
making deep fiscal cuts, with Superintendent Susan Swartz’s draft
budget for the 2011-12 showing reductions of more than $1.5
million.
Swartz’s budget, presented to the Scotia-Glenville Board of
Education on Monday, Feb. 28, has three phases of reductions
totaling $1.52 million in cuts. The carry-forward budget from the
current school year totaled $47.9 million and represented an
estimated tax increase of 7.7 percent. State aid for the district
would also be declining by almost $1.4 million or 8 percent
compared to the current year. Also included in cuts is a reduction
of 5.3 full-time equivalent staff members, which could be a
mixture of part-time and full-time employees to reach an estimated
savings of $238,342.
“I will not bring you anything that I feel really good about,”
said Swartz. “Many of these things you have seen before. We go
back to the same things … folks who attended our forums last year
and folks responded to our exit surveys were pretty clear about
what they saw and what they like about Scotia-Glenville.”
To help reduce the burden on taxpayers, a total of $500,000 will
be used from the fund balance of the district. Additionally, phase
one reductions include $29,000 in health insurance savings as
collective bargaining groups move from a CDPHP HMO plan to an EPO
plan. Reductions in building and grounds and transportation will
also total $120,000, with details to be presented at the next
board meeting.
There will also be the addition of two full-time teachers, going
to Lincoln and Sacandaga elementary schools. Last year there were
two smaller fourth grades, so for the current school year, they
were combined to make a single fifth grade. These two additions
would total $135,034.
“We have two healthy, well at the guidelines, fourth grades that
will now become fifth grades next year,” said Swartz. “Although
you know this will not be my recommendation, as fourth graders, to
move them to another school to less populated fifth-grade
sections; we don’t have less populated fifth-grade sections.”
Two retiring elementary school principals will also be replaced by
two current full-time employees in the district, which Swartz
estimates will save $250,000 since the administrative staff
members former positions wouldn’t be replaced.
Students probably won’t be leaving their classrooms during the
school day either for field trips, because Swartz is proposing
eliminating all field trips for a savings of $15,000.
“We are going to need to make better use of our technology …
perhaps to provide more virtual type field trips. It will never
replace getting kids out to the real people, the real places and
the real things,” said Swartz.
Students will also have to make sure they study too because summer
school is on the chopping block since it isn’t mandated. That move
would total $35,745 in savings. One group of students Swartz is
worried about with the option of summer school being eliminated is
high school seniors.
“The kids I worry about most are seniors,” said Swartz. “What can
we do so that seniors do not have to return for a fifth year of
part of a fifth year, because my experience has been quite frankly
that they won’t. Kids will not come back to finish.”
The district should possibly look at enrolling seniors in another
school’s summer program, she said, but if a student has “dug that
hole to deep” they might need to return for another semester or
year. She said there might be a way to step up and offer some
summer school classes, but currently she isn’t recommending the
option. Some other considerations are to offer online credit for
failed courses or establishing a type of independent study.
While the details of staff reductions isn’t going to be discussed
until the next board meeting on Monday, March 7, Swartz said it
would affect programs in the district.
“Staffing reductions will impact across the levels and they are
programmatic in nature,” said Swartz.
Sports also weren’t immune to cuts as she proposed eliminating
modified girls and boys tennis and girls and boys lacrosse.
Previously she has went after swimming teams and golf, but said
she learned he lessen after outcries from members of the teams and
parents.
Board member Benjamin Conlon restated he wanted to stick with his
previous intention on keeping the budget at a 2 percent or below
tax increase. Although he did express to keep the Young Scholars
program at the sixth-grade level, because of the advance
programming offered. Even with the proposed elimination the Scotia
Scholars program would still be offered.
In addition to Conlon wanting to see more possible cuts, board
member John Yagielski also said he would look to see what
additional cuts would entail.
“I would be interested in what phase four looks like,” said
Yagielski. “It would be nice to see what would come next … maybe
collectively the feedback would be those are better choices than
some of the things that are here.”
He also shared he’s been getting calls since January about the
budget and what people would like see remain offered or cries to
reduce the budget.
