HILLTOWNS — Berne-Knox-Westerlo’s proposed 2025-26 budget is set, giving the board of education one month to sell it to district residents, who twice last year had rejected the district’s proposed budget and forced it into contingency. 

Unlike the failed 2024-25 budget, the $24.7 million 2025-26 budget will require only a simple majority to pass, since the proposed tax-rate increase — 3.3 percent — is within the state-set limit.

Also on the ballot will be a roughly $524,000 proposition for three diesel buses along with candidates for school board, Matthew Tedeschi and Rebecca Miller, who are running unopposed as incumbents. 

If the budget passes, the new tax rate in each town per $1,000 of assessed value would be:

— $30.47 in Berne;

— $33.28 in Knox;

— $13.05 in Westerlo;

— $25.81 in Middleburgh

— $25.55 in Wright; 

— $18.07 in New Scotland; and

— $30.01 in Rensselaerville. 

Variations in the absolute tax increase by town are due to differences in each towns’ equalization rate, which is a number that assessed home values are multiplied by in order to standardize them across the district. 

As The Enterprise previously reported, the 2025-26 budget is smaller than the current contingency budget, which is $25.8 million, despite widespread cost increases to things like insurance premiums, electricity, and fuel. 

The version the board adopted at its April 21 meeting is also smaller than the one presented to it last month by about $600,000. 

Superintendent Bonnie Kane said at the April 21 meeting that reductions (or “efficiencies,” as she phrased it) were made by going “line by line through the budget and seeing what could be realistically reduced,” such as through personnel attrition and restructuring.  

Despite the overall decrease, Kane highlighted the fact that the district would be adding a social worker back into its staffing, after going two years without one. 

“Social workers, of course, are working for their students to develop social skills, conflict-resolution strategies,” Kane said. “Social workers will work with students to support them within and outside of the school day.” 

The budget also adds two new special-education programs within the district due to the “massive waiting list” for existing programs and the toll that out-of-district placements can have on students, Kane said, because of both travel time and poor educators. 

“We feel our teachers are best served to teach our students and help them grow, and we believe our environment is the best place for all our students,” she said.

The district will also be adding back its resource officer, an $81,000 position that was technically cut under the contingency budget, but an officer has been on-campus this school year thanks to funding through Albany County. The district will be paying for the officer this year, but Kane said that grants will offset the cost by around $20,000. 

Should BKW be forced into a contingency budget once again — meaning that it cannot change the existing tax levy — Kane said the district would consider cutting the following: a full-time high-school humanities teacher, programming, the resource officer, field trips, the social worker, graduation, a full-time custodial position, and the replacement of an out-of-shape dump truck.

District residents will vote on the budget on May 20 at the high school cafeteria from 7 a.m. until 9 p.m.