The Board of Education tonight unanimously adopted a 2011-12 budget that uses part of the district's state aid restoration to add one of the two OPAL teaching positions that had been previously cut.
The budget will go to the voters on Tuesday, May 17.
The spending plan totals $47,080,914, a $248,246 spending decrease from the current school year's budget of $47,329,160. The budget includes one-time revenue of $810,000 from the Education Jobs bill last August.
A public hearing on the budget will be held at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 4, at the middle school.
If the budget were approved by the community, the Glenville tax rate would increase by 1.86 percent or an estimated 37 cents per $1,000 assessed value. For the typical Glenville home with a $160,000 assessment, that means an increase of $59.45 per year, before savings from the state's STAR tax reduction program.
After the Community Forum on the Budget last Monday, March 28, board members agreed to reduce one grade 6 position in exchange for restoring funding for the grade 6 foreign language program, 1-2-3 Success program and the grades 6-12 summer school program.
Superintendent Susan Swartz said tonight that the restoration of about $400,000 in state aid, as a result of the resolution of the state budget, meant that one OPAL gifted and talented teacher could also be restored. That position will work with students at all four elementary schools in grades K-2; the library media specialists at each elementary school will work with OPAL students in grades 3-5.
She also said she was hopeful of finding money within the transportation budge to restore late bus runs at the middle and high schools for two or more days per week. The buses now run four days per week.
The proposed budget would increase the tax levy by 1.57 percent in the 2011-12 school year. Tax rates, as mentioned above, are what is on annual tax bills and what is used to compute a tax bill. Tax levy refers to the entire amount of money that a school district collects in taxes. For the current year, Scotia-Glenville collected $25,156,037 in property taxes; the proposed budget would allow the district to collect $25,550,902 in property taxes.
There has been talk in the state Legislature of implementing a property tax cap, which would cap the amount of increases that could be seen in the tax levy part of school budgets. A property tax cap would not control tax rates. Those are calculated by several factors, including property value growth and equalization rates. Equalization rates, effectively how current and up-to-date property values are in a community, are set by the state in August.
Voting will be held from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday, May 17, at the high school gym. The community will consider the proposed budget as well as filling three seats on the Board of Education.
Two Board of Education members running for re-election; Conlon not running again
On Monday evening, board members Pamela Carbone and Leslie Smith announced they are seeking re-election. Board member Ben Conlon said that, while he collected some signatures on petitions, that he was having second thoughts and may not seek re-election.
Petitions are available at the business office. Candidates must collect signatures from 49 school district community members and return the petitions to the business office by 5 p.m. on Monday, April 18. Read more here about the election process.
Read more about the 2011-12 budget process [MORE]
