City school district left searching for answers

By Bryan Foti
No one knew what to expect when they filed into the Duken Elementary School for the Plattsburgh City School District Board Meeting. The people soon found out. The plan was to begin to discuss the up-coming budget for the 2010-2011 school year.
The Plattsburgh School District, which was founded in 1811 and has over 1,800 students enrolled with 237 teachers employed. Superintendent James Short opened the meeting with a startling statement saying that New York State would cut state aid to the district. The State has taken away 1.2 million dollars in funding and this leaves the Plattsburgh City School District with about a 2.8 million dollar budget gap. The room irrupted with noise.
After people settled down Short offered a good start to counteract the deficit; he said that 15 teachers will retire at the end of this school year and it will save the school 843,000 dollars and this sum eliminates about one-third of the budget gap. Short then started asking the school board members what they thought was the best way to counteract the deficit. Many different opinions were voiced from raising taxes, cutting programs to possible layoffs.
School Board President Clayton Morris seemed to have his priorities in order because he came with a list that was designed with no teacher layoffs. Morris then expressed his desire to keep class size the same and to keep the current curriculum including engineering and calculus that other districts do not offer.
Assistant Superintendent for Business Jay Lebrun threw out an idea suggesting the district tap into their reserve funds. He suggested that no more than 600,000 dollars be taken out of the reserve. The board members decided that it was safe to take 400,000 dollars out of the fund and they will use that money towards this upcoming budget.
The meeting then moved toward the possibility of sports cuts. Board members then asked Plattsburgh Athletic Director Clifford “Joe” Staves what it would be like if they were to cut 25 percent of the sports department. Staves said that the school would probably lose 6 to 8 sports teams.
The meeting concluded with a lot of confusion and left the school board and the administrative staff with big decisions to make.
The big deficit has left many question marks for the board and the administrative staff to answer. The first question would be weather the community is willing to raise taxes. Short said “if you wanted to complete the budget with just tax raises you would have to increase by about 10.5 percent.” Clearly, that is not going to happen. Short then posed the question to the board “how much would they be willing to raise taxes?” Many board members did not think that raising taxes would be the best way to go. Morris said he would vote for a zero percent raise while others said they go to a one or two percent increase. Two was the highest.
Another question for the board is the possibility of layoffs of teachers. This has already started in the sports department when the school board voted that the school will not pay for assistant coaches and they instead will be volunteers this year. Teachers however are very valuable and according to Short, “we will likely be reducing to 224-229 due to budget effects.” Morris is not in favor of cutting teachers his reasoning is “every person you cut means less people coming into our community. It really puts a loss of young people coming in and working here.”
If the district does decide to layoff some teachers that may lead people to ask whether the size of the class will grow and what will happen to teachers on lower levels will they up to the middle school or high school? Will teachers be teaching more than one subject?
Another question is how the district is going to get the money to make up for the deficit. The retirement from the 15 teachers at the end of the year will help. Morris said at the end of the meeting he would try to personally thank those 15 teachers for helping the district in a time where they need all the help they can get. The reserve fund is another big way the school can get some money.
Lebrun thinks the reserve can help with the upcoming budget. “That is why they are there to be used for times like this.” Lebrun thinks the district can safely take out about 600,000 dollars without hurting the reserves. However the board felt it would be safer to take out 400,000 dollars instead. This still leaves the district searching for answers on how to erase the budget gap.
Patricia Bentley is a member on the school board and she says by far this has been the most difficult budget she has seen. “No question. The deficit is large by any standard and begs a huge array of questions about programs, staff and why we serve.” Short seems to agree with Bentley “I’ve been a Superintendent for over 11 years in two school districts – I would say this year is in the top two of most difficult budgets. This is the most difficult budget Plattsburgh has seen in a long time.”
Sacrifice seems to be the theme that the Plattsburgh district has take en route to creating this budget “we have to pick our spots” Morris says this about making cuts. Morris knows things are going to be cut he states “I take a different approach to it. My approach is how many students it will affect. If I have a two programs that cost the same but one has 20 students involved in it and the other has 100 students involved I would have to cut the program with 20 students because it is more cost effective.”
It seems that Short and Morris get along very well together which should make it easier for a budget to be created. Morris was asked what the hardest part about working with the administrative staff and the rest of his board he responded “there is no hard pat we all work very well together and have a good relationship.” This should be beneficial when Short and Morris finally come up with a proposed budget. It is a very tough time for the Plattsburgh District there will be a lot of tough decisions being made within the next few weeks but all and all the board and the administrative staff feel they will be able to get a budget created that will continue to bring good quality education to the students of the Plattsburgh Community. The next problem will be to get it approved.