Budget Hearing Tonight May Bring Welcomed News

Babylon school district officials are awaiting a final state aid figure now that Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature have agreed on a $132.5 billion budget one week before the official deadline.

The district is hoping to see a healthier aid figure given lawmakers restored $272 million in education funding.

State aid to school districts is still on the sharp decline, though, with payouts to districts set to fall more than $1 billion next year.

Under the initial state aid package the school district was slated to get $790,397 in state aid, a 12 percent decrease from this year’s aid amount.

The district’s initial budget proposal for 2011-2012 calls for eliminating 3.8 teaching jobs and a fulltime custodial position. It also would not replace three retiring teachers and a clerical worker.

The proposed $46,329,000 sending plan, which would bring a tax increase of 5.96 percent, is 3.2 percent more than the current budget. It would not eliminate any interscholastic and co-curricular programs and would maintain all core instructional programs, according to school officials.

The staff reductions are the result of declining enrollment and program interest, said Superintendent Ellen Best-Laimit.

The current school budget is $44.9 million and represented a 1.93 tax rate increase over the previous year and a 2.43 percent budget increase. It is the lowest in nearly 20 years, according to school administrators. The last two budgets represent the lowest two-year consecutive tax rate increases since 1972, said officials.

The first budget hearing earlier this month drew over a 100 residents  with nearly a dozen speaking out against the proposed plan.

Many told the board that the district should cut back on employee health plan contributions and reduce current teacher and administration salaries.

The board told the audience that it was communicating with the teacher’s union to discuss renegotiating the current contract.

Board members declined to provide any specific concessions being discussed stating it would not conduct negotiations in a public venue.

Several residents called for reductions in administrative positions and that approach is exactly what one longtime resident believes as well.

Ten-year resident David Thuma calls the initial draft tax figure “outrageous in this economic environment.” He believes the board and administration need to identify “significant savings” from reducing the administrative and supervisory staff.

“Simply cutting seven teachers, one clerk, one custodian, and possibly transportation and sports programs, is not a creative solution in a district with as many as 57 people primarily performing administrative type duties,” Thuma told Patch in an email.

Thuma, as well as many residents at the first hearing, said it’s time for pay freezes, givebacks and reductions from staff and administrators.

“Governor Cuomo suggested a $155,000 cap on the superintendent’s salary (based on our district size) and we should be implementing it now along with similar reductions to the other two superintendents,” he told Patch.

“When 70 percent of your $46 million dollar budget is salaries and benefits it doesn’t make a lot of sense to focus on $7,000 intramural programs and using a few hundred thousand in reserves for band-aid fixes.”

The second public budget hearing is tonight, Monday, March 28 at 7:30 at the high school library.  It is expected that the board will release a line-by-line budget outlining specific costs.