Citizens reviewing $87.5M spending proposal lament lost programs

GUILDERLAND — “This is truly a year of survival for our district,” Demian Singleton told the two dozen citizens who gathered last Thursday to begin their review of the proposed $87.5 million budget for next year.

In many instances, said Singleton, the district’s assistant superintendent for curriculum, programs have been compromised as $4 million in cuts are proposed.

In an earlier session, Superintendent John McGuire had outlined his “damage control” plan that, because of decreasing state aid and increasing costs for salaries and benefits along with stagnant property assessments, proposes cutting 81 jobs district-wide.

Without the cutbacks, McGuire said, the budget-to-budget increase from this year to next would have been 9.45 percent, bringing a tax-rate hike of close to 17 percent.

The current proposal is 2.57 percent higher than this year’s budget and would raise the tax rate for Guilderland residents by 3.61 percent.

The school board adopts a final proposal in April and voters have their say in May.

Committee members, many of them parents, questioned the cuts, to which administrators replied, again and again, that they shared the sadness and regret but needed to meet targets to keep taxes in check.

“We’ve tried to strike a balance,” McGuire said at one point in the discussion as committee members were lamenting cuts to valuable programs. “We have people in our community who have lost their employment, who have lost their health insurance, who have lost their homes….I don’t know if 3.61 percent is too high or too low,” he said of the proposed tax-rate increase. “It’s a good-faith balance.”

“If people knew what was at stake,” said committee member Regina Brownell, they might vote for a budget with higher taxes.

In answer to a question from Jesse Feinman, a Guilderland student serving on the advisory committee, McGuire re-iterated that, in an unprecedented move, he had approached the leaders of each of the district’s 12 bargaining units to see if the units would agree to a salary freeze.

“That’s a heck of a thing to ask,” said the superintendent.

About three-quarters of the budget are made up of salaries and benefits for Guilderland’s 1,038 employees.

“It was received seriously; it was received well,” said McGuire, noting that he had heard back from two units that they would consider a full-year salary freeze.

If all 12 units agree, the savings would be $1.9 million, said McGuire.

He added, “That would not save all these reductions.”

If the wage freeze were agreed to, it would be up to the nine-member school board to decide what should be done with the saved funds. “I would lobby some of the savings go to these reductions,” said McGuire.

(For a detailed overview of the budget, go online to www.altamontenterprise.com and look under Guilderland archives for March 4, 2010.)

“Holding pattern”

Citizens on the budget advisory committee heard last Thursday, March 4, from principals at the elementary, middle-school, and high-school levels about their missions and what the proposed cuts would mean.

“We’re not introducing anything new but rather telling you where we’re having reductions,” said Lynnwood Elementary Principal James Dillon. The administrative team gave each segment of the district target amounts to cut, based on the previous year’s budget so that no one program would be decimated. The five elementary schools together were targeted to cut $840,000.

The elementary schools are cutting 10.7 teaching positions as class sizes are increased. This includes five classroom teachers as well as the 2.8 teaching posts that constituted the elementary-school foreign-language program. It also includes 1.2 posts in special education as well as part-time cuts in music and art, reading, enrichment, and in the library.

As elementary enrollment increases, the guidelines for class size are to move from a maximum of 22 up to 24 in kindergarten, first, and second grades, and to move from 24 up to 26 for third, fourth, and fifth grades.

In answer to a question about cuts to teaching assistants, Dillon said, “Obviously, when you have a larger class size, it impacts individualized time…We do have skilled teachers,” he concluded.

Dillon also said that the co-teaching model where special-education teachers work with general education teachers in the classroom wouldn’t be progressing. “The staffing is not going to be at a level we like,” said Dillon. “We’re in a holding pattern.”

One committee member asked what would happen to the students who had been learning Spanish in the Foreign Language Early Start program, which is not mandated by the state. “This is not an easy reduction to make,” said Dillon. “We still think these kids will have benefited.”

Committee member Allan Simpson, a candidate for school board last year who opposed the move to a full-day kindergarten program, asked if the schools could return to half-day kindergarten to save other educational programs.

Dillon replied that he, too, had been “a little skeptical about full-day kindergarten,” but, having observed it, he said, “By having them all day, we find those kids who might be struggling...and get help early on…It can really pay dividends.”

“Quite a challenge”

Farnsworth Middle School Principal Mary Summermatter said it was “quite a challenge” to meet the $510,000 in reductions targeted for the middle school by the administration. “It took us a lot of discussion, a lot of soul-searching,” she said.

Enrollment has “plateaued,” she said with about 400 students at each grade level, compared to 500 when she arrived five years ago.

The middle school plans to cut 4.65 teaching posts including 1.3 in core subjects, 1.35 in special areas, one in the FMS Academy for at-risk students, and part-time posts in foreign language and special education. The academy currently serves 16 seventh-graders and 16 eighth-graders.

Additional cuts will include moving from two nurses to 1.5, cutting the summer-school program, cutting two clerical posts and a monitor as well as a half-time Xerox operator. There will be no new equipment and no conference money.

Committee member Catherine Wilson asked why so much was being cut from students who need extra help or special services.

“This conversation echoes the conversation we had in recent months,” said McGuire. “None of us are putting this forward as desirable. We had to reach targets.”

“Does a child have to fall so far behind, they have an IEP and then catch them?” asked Wilson, referring to a state-mandated individualized education program for special-needs students.

“No, we don’t want children to fail,” said McGuire, in order to get mandated help. “If you have a better way to make this palatable to our community, we are listening.”

The teaching of German will be phased out, Summermatter said, although students currently learning German will be allowed to continue their study of the language.

Stipends for co-curricular or club advisors are also being cut, prompting one committee member to ask, “If the goal of the middle school is to create a whole child, what will be left?”

Intramural sports will still be funded, said Summermatter.

Another citizen asked if parents could pay a fee for students to participate in clubs in order to keep them going. “That’s still an option,” answered Summermatter.

Simpson questioned administrative costs to which McGuire replied that, compared to other schools and businesses, Guilderland’s ratio of one administrator for every 26 students is “very, very lean.” He said the average for public schools is 1 to 15.

“High stakes”

“The program at the high school is for very high stakes,” said Principal Brian McCann. “Students are faced with requirements of performance they must meet. We might love you to pieces but, if you don’t pass…you don’t get a diploma.”

Students must earn 23 credits and pass five specific state-mandated Regents exams to graduate. Last year, 94 percent of the class went on to college, a little over two-thirds to four-year schools.

The high school, with declining enrollment, was targeted to cut $840,000 from this year’s expenditures. The high school currently has 13 departments and offers a total of 252 courses.

The high school plans to cut seven teaching positions, including 3.2 in core subjects, 1.2 in special areas, and 1.2 in foreign languages as well as part-time cuts in reading, special education, library, and social work.

McCann said the school anticipates not being able to accommodate all student requests for college-level courses in English, European history, economics, forensics, calculus, and computer programming, or in the shared English-social studies classes known as 9X, 10X, and 11X.

The school also may not offer a sixth year of French, sculpture, or co-taught English classes.

Additionally, it will not be offering certain English and social studies electives, college-level sociology, public policy, and computer science, or courses in global environment and advanced studio art.

The high school population is very fluid, said McCann. “We can’t count on projected numbers staying where they are,” he said since the courses students want or need to take vary from semester to semester. If courses are oversubscribed, selection will be made randomly by computer, said McCann.

Committee member Deborah Marcil, a former Farnsworth administrator, asked if the school ever said what should be taught as opposed to following student choices.

McCann also said that, if class size is too high, it is hard to get every student through. And, he said that the 24 students slated for science laboratories were “close to not being in compliance” with state regulations. Honors classes will have 29 or 30 students and Regents classes will have 26 or 27 students except for those that involve labs, which must be smaller.

Committee member Linda Bakst, a former school board member, asked if English teachers still teach four courses instead of the usual five. McCann replied, “It’s a contractual issue, not something we can even talk about” in budget discussions.

McCann said that the high school would continue with its team teaching in the ninth grade.

He also went over additional reductions for co-curricular programs, with funds cut in half; for alternative education for non-identified students who have shown by the end of 10^th grade they might have a hard time graduating; for equipment and equipment repair; and for a half-time attendance clerk.

Fein, the student, said he’d heard concerns the cuts might make Guilderland students less competitive in their college applications.

McCann said the team of administrators at the high school had spent two months coming up with the cuts to meet the target $840,000. “Every part of the program has got to take a hit but no one piece can take too big of a hit,” said McCann, describing the cuts as “very, very bitter pills to swallow.”

He concluded, “While every piece was impacted, no piece was decimated.”