Archive: News

	This week we present the 'School Budget' issue with five articles about cuts the Lansing and Ithaca school systems are facing and how the public is reacting.

Monday's Lansing Board Of Education meeting attracted about 200 teachers, community members and students after the initial list of cuts to next year's school budget was released.  20 addressed the board, mainly to ask them not to cut teachers or close the high school swimming pool.  But school board members are faced with filling about a $1 million of a budget gap that starts at about 2.3 million.

"The budget is two things: how much do we spend, and how much money do we have coming in?  Our sources of revenue are down $1.3 million," said Superintendent Stephen Grimm.  "Our need to expend more is up $1.5 million.  The total difference between those two is $2.8 million.  That's the amount that needs to be made up by reducing what we're spending, or bringing revenues up.  Our only source of bringing revenues up is taxpayers.  Our only sources of reducing expenditures is cutting things.  And most of those 'things' are people."


Grimm presented an overall look at the budget and budgeting process, and Business Administrator Mary June King gave a presentation on cuts that are proposed and the impact they would have on the budget. 

"Our total loss of revenue is in the $1.3 million range," said Grimm.  If we look at our current budget and calculate our fixed cost increases, we would need another $1.5 million for this coming year.  Normally you get that difference from the state or the taxpayers and then you move on.  But this year we had that loss of revenue.  The revenue for this coming year would be $22.6 million."

But not all school board members were happy with the cuts presented, and much of the public was dismayed.  School board member Glenn Cobb noted that nearly half the Tier I cuts, which would account for $927,500 of reductions, would reduce teaching positions.  Cobb suggested digging deeper to find economies such as using the cost-free open-source OpenOffice programs instead of the Microsoft Office suite.  Board member Michael Cheatham said the cuts leaned too heavily on reducing teacher positions.

"They are somewhat skewed," Cheatham said.  "Almost $400,000 in cuts on the instructional side.  That's real teachers being cut.  The whole budget for athletics and co-curriculars exceeds that amount but you don't see a proportional amount coming from those two categories.  I don't think it's fair.  It's not spread across constituency groups."

King presented a presentation explaining the budget gap, and alternative budget amounts that could raise the tax rate within a range of from 3.53% to as much as 13.61%.  Teacher's union President Stacie Kropp suggested letting voters decide whether they would bear more taxes, noting that a vote on second budget i allowed if the first vote fails.  But school officials seemed skeptical that the community would stomach a huge tax increase in the wake of the failed economy.

Raising the budget to $25,353,237 would mean a 13.61% tax rate rise.  But even lowering the budget would mean a rise in the tax rate in large part because of revenue losses from AES Cayuga and state and federal aid losses.  A $23,853,237 budget would result in a 3.53% rise in the tax rate even though it would reduce the levy by 2.67%.

Grimm warned that the school board will have to decide on the final numbers and cuts in the April 12th board meeting.  Cobb asked administrators to come back next week with a new list that looks at alternative cuts and preserves more of academic programs.


"Nothing is written in stone here," King said.  "(The leadership team) needs to think about how they fit this into their program.  They need to think about the future of their programs, how they can make things work.  There is very little doubt in anyone's mind that education nation-wide has to reconsider how we're doing business.  These are the experts who will have to put their nose to it and figure out how we can best serve the students of this community."

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