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After cutting over $1 million from the 'rollover budget' last year, Lansing school officials are looking at significant cuts again this year.  "I have no doubt in my mind that it will mean layoffs," School Superintendent Stephen Grimm told a somber Board Of Education Monday.  "There is no way we can reduce that much when 80% of your costs are in personnel.  But we will be open and forthright with everything, and it will be a collaborative process.  We'll work together on it."

As with just about anything involving money and statistics, saying that the district cut $1 million is a matter of interpretation.  This year's budget was actually three quarters of a million dollars more than that in the previous year.  A 'rollover budget' is what it would cost next year to do exactly what was done this year, meaning that the million in cuts was to what money can buy this year, versus what it could buy the year before.  And because the district cut significantly last year Grimm says forming next year's budget will be all the more challenging.

"I can tell you this," he said.  "It's going to be difficult, and I think more difficult for us because we already went through a very good trimming last Spring.  Here we are having to trim again, whereas other districts may not have had to do that first."

Last year the school board was burdened with more than $260,000 of overspending that added to the cuts needed in forming this year's budget.  With a new administration in place, officials have been closely monitoring spending this year.  We're trying very hard to under spend," says School Business Administrator Mary June King.  "We haven't overspent."

This month Grimm attended the New York State Council of School Superintendents Conference, where he said that school budgets was one of the main topics.  With significant cuts in the state budget educators are worried that more aid will be cut than their districts can handle.  Grimm says it was reported there that reductions in school funding have been worse at times in the past decade and a half.

"Even so, we have a significant amount that is reduced," he told the Board.  "We're going to come out at the next meeting and have a detailed analysis of that.  The initial figures are in the $600,000 to $700,000  range of a reduction.  We want to take a look at what that means.  If we normally get six or seven hundred thousand dollars and that's a reduction, then we're over a million dollars."


Grimm said that state EXCEL and project funding tagged for the two building projects approved in the December vote will not be affected.  "That's one of the things they were very clear about," he said.  "None of the EXCEL or project aids are affected."

"We are heading towards starting to build the next budget," King said.  "The supervisors and principals are working on their individual departments and areas, and once I have a better feel for exactly where we are we should be able to move forward on that."

Grimm said that he would have a better idea of how much will have to be cut at the next school board meeting.  "We're in the middle of our number crunching," he said.  "Our goal is to have at a meeting on the 26th a pretty clear explanation of where we are now and where we think we need to be.  Then the plan for communicating that and utilizing the similar collaborative planning that we did last year."

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