To the Editor:

I was not surprised to read that a recent Berne-Knox-Westerlo School Board meeting was contentious. When an organization — public or private — is budgeting for programs with annual expenditures in the tens of millions of dollars, the complexity alone is likely to lead to differing views.

The trade-offs among wants, needs, costs, benefits, effectiveness, and efficiencies are typically challenging. This can be true even in much smaller family budgeting discussions, as we all know.

However, I was surprised to read that given the scope of the BKW budget proposed by Interim Superintendent Lonnie Palmer and given his many years in the field that he said, "I have never ever encountered a board member who thought it their role to take data that the business office provides and go through it line-by-line and says, ‘This is wrong, this is wrong’...."

After many years of experience personally in budgetary analysis, I know that going line-by-line is essential to determine what is accurate and what is not. This is especially true of multi-million dollar budgets where inadvertent errors or flawed assumptions can creep in.

That Mr. Palmer finds board member Vasilios Lefkaditis’s detailed approach to budgeting to be unprecedented in his experience is difficult to grasp.

When an executive (or a governor or a president) proposes a budget to his board of directors (or the legislature or the Congress), should he expect approval without careful detailed analysis and challenge? No. Quite the opposite.

On the website of the New York State School Boards Association there is a Fiscal Oversight Fundamentals page. It states that all school board members are required by law to complete training in financial oversight, accountability, and fiduciary responsibilities in order to monitor and manage a district's financial fitness.

How any board member can fulfill these required functions without detailed involvement in the budgetary process escapes me. Given this legal requirement, hopefully, every board member takes it seriously as he or she oversees the expenditure of public funds.

At a time when the national economy is sluggish at best and many of us on fixed incomes are struggling with financial pressures we need to spend wisely. This is true for governments, businesses, and families.

BKW faces this situation as well. How we best identify the most informed trade-offs between a) the educational programs our young people need and b) the range of cost inputs and taxation levels they entail is a daunting challenge.

It requires thorough reviews of proposed budgets and contracts before their approval and attentive oversight of their implementation. This is the kind of expertise that Vasilios Lefkaditis has demonstrated as a board member.

Whether every board member or the superintendent agrees with every position he takes or not isn't the point. The point is that his viewpoints merit candid discussion, even if, at times, it leads to contention.

He has made many valued contributions to our school district. Surely, the residents of the district are best served by a variety of viewpoints before finalizing significant actions that have a wide impact on us all. 

So on May 20, there are very good reasons to re-elect Mr. Lefkaditis, among which are his extensive community involvements, his seasoned and intimate knowledge of the BKW school district, his expertise and track record in business and finance, and his willingness to take on difficult demanding challenges.

And, because he has children attending BKW, he brings the concerns of a parent as well as those of a local business owner, and taxpayer to the table.

Thankfully, he does not appear to be a person who goes along to get along.

Victor Porlier
East Berne