Voters to decide
VCSD proposes $21M budget, increase of 4.7 percent



VOORHEESVILLE – The school board voted unanimously on Monday to put a $21 million budget up for public vote. The spending plan represents an increase of about 4.7 percent over this year’s budget.

Sixty-eight percent of the budget, or about $14 million dollars, will be raised through property taxes, creating an increase in the tax levy of 5.5 percent.
"I think it’s a good budget," Assistant Superintendent for Business Sarita Winchell told The Enterprise this week. "Everybody tried to do their part to get the number down as best they could," she said.
"Our taxes increase at a faster rate than the salaries of the people who live in this district, and it’s hard," said School Board President David Gibson before bringing the budget proposal to a board vote on Monday.
"The board has been very responsive to parents’ concerns and to students’ needs," Winchell told The Enterprise, following the board’s approval of the proposed budget. The board listened to the parents who were concerned about class size and added a new teacher; and added a social worker, a first for the district, to satisfy the needs of the students, she explained.

The public will have its say on May 15, at which time it will also elect a school board member and vote on a $207,470 bus proposition.

School board members were surprised, when, upon arriving at Monday’s meeting, the newly added position for a social worker, which was listed as part-time at the previous week’s budget workshop, had been adjusted to a full-time position. The change resulted in an increase of about $33,000 in the budget.

In December, high school Principal Mark Diefendorf had suggested hiring a social worker. It was part of a proposal to help ease the transition for eighth-graders into the high school.

Diefendorf fleshed out his plan, and, in an attempt to make the plan more appealing to the board, he dropped the full-time post to a half-time position when he presented a more detailed proposal at the March meeting.
Voorheesville has "never had a social worker assigned to this district," Diefendorf told The Enterprise earlier. "There is an increasing demand on our guidance staff and psychologist," he said.
Most schools of comparable size to Voorheesville have both a social worker and a psychologist in addition to their guidance department staff, Diefendorf said earlier, adding that dealing with the problems of students can often be time-consuming. The social worker would help "develop programs that are pro-active," he said Monday.

Making the newly-created social worker position a full-time position was suggested to the board by Vice President C. James Coffin.
"We’ve seen an explosion of kids having trouble completing their high school program," Coffin said at Monday night’s board meeting. "We’ve got to find a way to deal with it."
The "myriad of issues" that students face in all three schools of the district, Coffin said, is "an impossible task for a half-time person."
From a financial standpoint, "I don’t perceive it as a big stretch," he said. The post would cost about $60,000.
Outspoken board member Richard Brackett warned the board of imminent shock before saying, "I actually back this" Sometimes you just need someone to talk to."
Gibson was skeptical. Creating the position on a half-time basis, he said, would allow the district to "see what the effects are."
Starting the position at full-time would alter the duties of the other administrators, and, if it doesn’t work, he continued, "taking it back out is extremely difficult."
"I think we’re way behind the curve in dealing with these social problems," Coffin said.
"The school social worker is the single most important need to the district," Diefendorf said at Monday’s meeting.
If the position is the district’s greatest necessity, "Why did we not get it until tonight"" Gibson asked.

He then asked for input from elementary- and middle-school administrators.
"We patch things the best we can," elementary school Principal Kenneth Lein said. "The need is certainly there," he added.
"These children come in with their baggage and they need to put it somewhere," said the associate principal for the middle school, Theresa Kennedy. "I don’t think it would be successful to spread a half-time person through the three schools," she added.

Ultimately, four board members backed the new post – Thomas McKenna, Brackett, Coffin, and Paige Pierce – while the other three – Gibson, Gary Hubert, and Kevin Kroencke – opposed.

"Real needs in the district"

"We have some real needs in this district," Winchell said this week.

Superintendent Linda Langevin told The Enterprise a few weeks ago that the elementary school is facing "unanticipated" increases in enrollment, and she expects the growth to continue a rate of 20 to 23 students at the school each year.

Currently, the school district has 555 students, and class sizes at the elementary school range from 20 to 24.

Her initial proposal was to hire a half-time teacher at the elementary school to teach literacy and math skills during the first half of the school day to a fifth of fourth graders.

At that time, Voorheesville Teachers’ Union President Kathy Fiero told The Enterprise that she had a lot of issues with the plan. "It’s a good high-school model, but it’s not a good elementary-school plan," she said.

Langevin then adjusted the budget, making the half-time teacher into a full-time teacher; the new proposal was met with enormous support from parents and school-board members.

Though budget meetings do not generally attract many onlookers, the high-school cafeteria was packed with district parents on March 26. Those who addressed the board were fully supportive of the additional teacher.
Ed Wolinsky has a daughter in the third grade. Wolinsky told the board that he has "strong support" for the additional teacher. He and his daughter agree, he said, "There’s a significant benefit to having a smaller class."
Tanya Hensel, the president of the Parent-Teacher Association spoke on behalf of district parents, mentioning an "overwhelming support for the additional teacher" among the parents she had talked to.

The third-grade class has the second-largest percentage of special-needs children in the school, Hensel said, citing the importance of smaller class size.
"The kids need the continual attention so they can learn to be self-disciplined," Langevin said at last week’s meeting.

She added that the district’s contract does allow a large number of children in a class, but that it has kept to a smaller class size over the years.
"The reason this school district exists is to teach children," Gibson said.

Revenue

Voorheesville will receive $5.7 million in state aid, an increase of $115,686, or 2 percent over this year’s budget, Winchell told The Enterprise.

Roughly 68 percent of revenues will come from property taxes, 27 percent from state aid, and about 5 percent from other sources, she said.
State aid is broken down into multiple categories, Winchell said. "The foundation aid is really the only one that increased."

The increase was essentially the aid amount the district received for 2006-07 plus 3 percent, she said. Because the other aid categories remained fairly stagnant, the state aid percentage increase for the district remains low, said Winchell.

The $14 million tax levy is an increase over this year’s budget of about $759,515, or about 5.5 percent, Winchell said.

Tech Valley
"We have to look at new ways of doing things," Coffin announced at the recent budget workshop.

Tech Valley High School Principal Dan Liebert attended the March 26 budget meeting to discuss the innovative new high school where faculty will work with local business and science concerns, offering hands-on learning; the school will open in the fall. The school will draw students and support from two different area BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Services).

The main obstacle for the Voorheesville board was the $18,000 tuition per student. The first year, only one student from each component district will attend, with enrollment growing annually.

The district will get about half the money back the following year, as it does with other BOCES programming.

Jim Campbell’s daughter, Kenzie, was selected to be the first Voorheesville student to attend the high school. She will be a freshman in the fall.
Campbell told the board that he is the chief financial officer of a 6,000-employee company, and "crossing disciplines is where we need to go" The gain is going to be great."
Board member Kevin Kroencke was not convinced the investment was one the district was ready for. "I’m skeptical," Kroencke announced. He was the only board member who voted against sending a student.
Kroencke asked Liebert, "Why not let you work out your bugs first""

Liebert answered that the first years will have the highest faculty-to-student ratio, and students will have the greatest opportunity to learn then.
Gary Bates, a district resident, told the board that he has been working as an engineer for General Electric for 30 years. "This is a great investment in the future," he said. "Waiting to see if it works is how we destroy a lot of good ideas," Bates added.

Theresa Gallagher, a member of the advisory board for BOCES, also chimed in on the discussion.
"I’m just not ready to dive in at this point" I’m not sure that ninth grade is the right time to start," Gallagher said.

The board ultimately decided in a 5-to-1 vote, to support Tech Valley High School in next year’s budget.
"I think this is a valuable experiment," Gibson said.