As school districts across the state grapple with the repercussions of the pandemic, presidents of four local school boards – Saugerties, Onteora, Kingston and New Paltz — are struggling to steady their ships in financially perilous waters. So much has changed. So much is changing. The next year is going to be a very tough one
Adapting to the closure of schools through the remainder of the 2019-20 academic year has taken a considerable amount of administrative time and focus. School boards are now working with other changes, none of which are more essential then determining their operating budgets for the next school year. Governor Andrew Cuomo has told districts there may be a need for significant cuts in state aid.
School officials are having to craft a range of scenarios, including some that they dread choosing.
“We’re planning as we go along here,” said Robert Thomann, president of the Saugerties school board. “We’ve been taking cues from our business official, and right now everything is an estimate. We’re estimating what we’re going to get cut by the state. And it’s difficult, because you’ve got to put up a budget only days before you’ll find out what your funding is actually going to be. And I think it creates a lot of stress or people like the superintendent and a central office staff that are working on this. It can’t be too much fun.”
While some districts are still putting their budgets together, the Onteora board adopted its spending plan for the 2020-21 school year last week. The proposed $54.67-million budget calls for a spending increase of just under one percent, with a local tax levy increase of 2.56 percent.
Board president Laurie Osmond stressed that the spending plan was put together prior to the arrival of Covid 19. It’s a different world now.
“We did adopt the budget with a clear understanding that this is the budget that we had planned on before the pandemic,” she said. “I don’t think anyone really knows what to expect. We’ve all heard the governor talk about cuts of perhaps up to 50 percent. The governor stressed how important federal aid is going to be, and I would hope the federal government recognizes that it has a role to play in all of this. That would be nice.”
The Kingston schools last week adopted a $187.43-million budget that includes an increase in appropriations of 3.65 percent and a tax-levy increase of 1.73 percent. School officials are hoping to bridge a two-million-dollar gap by using a portion of its fund balance. A public hearing on the proposed budget is scheduled for Monday, June 1.
Kingston school board president James Shaughnessy said that the district is trying to prepare for any eventuality. “Look-back” dates in the state budget adopted in early April could result in cuts should revenues not meet projections, something that’s being widely anticipated.
“The district is always careful in its spending; we will continue to be very vigilant,” said Shaughnessy. “The board of education endeavors to balance the needs of our students with our community’s values and their ability to pay. We will present a budget that maintains student programs and is at or below the tax-levy limit. We will double the amount of reserve funds to reduce the tax levy. We want to preserve jobs; any staff reductions will be through attrition. We trust the community will support our budget. as it has in the past.”
The New Paltz district is still reviewing its 2020-21 budget, said school board president Michael O’Donnell. “We expect the portion of revenue we receive from New York State to decline in both the short and long term,” O’Donnell said. “Functionally, that means we’ll have to scale back the budget we were considering in March, and we’ll need to prepare to make further adjustments throughout the school year.”
An absentee-ballot election
There’s no time to lose. School-board elections and district budget votes will be held by absentee ballot on Tuesday, June 9. School districts have been charged with sending out ballots to registered voters, which must take place soon after this Monday’s deadline for school-board candidates in Kingston, that’s around 33,000 ballots.
“Every registered voter will receive a ballot with a postage-paid return envelope,” said Shaughnessy. “Ballots will be hand-counted. Past elections have cost the district approximately $13,000. This election will cost as much as $100,000, a significant amount of money.”
Onteora is still unsure of what the election will cost, said Osmond, but the district is getting ballots out to the voters as required.
“We’re following the guidance,” she said. “The district is required to notify voters in the district of the election and also have to send them an absentee ballot with a prepaid return envelope. I don’t know what the cost of that is, but right now districts are looking at having their funding cut by the state, and any unplanned cost is significant. But the district is complying.”
Thomann said he’s unsure how the Saugerties turnout will be impacted by the absentee voting.
School board election
Voters in New Paltz will elect two members to the Board of Education for three-year terms, commencing July 1, 2020 and expiring June 30, 2023. The candidates who announced they are running include: Brian Cournoyer, Allison Lauchaire, Edgar Rodriguez and Teresa Thompson.
In Saugerties, three candidates are running for three open seats. The candidates are: Krista Barringer, Susan Gage and Timothy Wells.
As of this writing, complete school board candidate information was not available from Onteora and the Kingston school districts. Shaughnessy said that vice-president Priscilla Lowe and Nora Scherer had announced their intent to run for reelection to the KCSD Board of Education; the Rev. James Childs, Jr. is also nearing the end of his current term.
In Onteora, Osmond said that Bennet Ratcliffe was planning to run again, but was unsure about fellow incumbent Robert Burke Warren.
Returning to school
Local school boards are also looking ahead at what school might look like when students return from summer break in September, with districts considering numerous scenarios based on what is happening with the pandemic.
“The district administration has begun to plan for schools to reopen in September,” said Shaughnessy. “The most important concern is always the safety of our students and staff. The novel coronavirus is not going to disappear. Our plans will be designed to prevent the spread of the Covid 19 illness. We will follow the guidance of our medical and public-health experts. We will emphasize wellness and hygiene.
There will be stringent disinfection of the facilities, he said. “I don’t have expertise to say what those measures might be,” he added, “and I will leave it to our school administration to announce them as they are developed.”
Regardless of what happens in September, Shaughnessy stressed that the Kingston schools will seek to minimize stress within its diverse community as much as possible.
“We know this is an extreme crisis for our community, state, and country,” he said. “People have lost jobs. and are in very precarious financial positions. Families are insecure in their access to food and the permanency of their housing. Access to relief is stymied by overwhelming demand and breakdowns in systems. When parents are in crisis, children are in crisis. We will continue our efforts to feed our students and continue our partnerships with city, county, and community organizations. We will be prepared for anxiety, trauma, and other manifestations of impaired mental health, both before and when our students return to school.”
Osmond said that Onteora’s geography means it’s left to consider what social distancing might mean beyond the classroom. “We’re a district of something like 289 square miles, one of the largest school district in New York,” she said. “How do you socially distance on a school bus? Do you take the temperature of every child before they get on the bus and have the bus run delayed by 45 minutes to an hour, knowing that temperature alone is not an indication of whether or not you have Covid? Do you increase your bus run, which is not feasible budgetarily? There’s so many questions.”
O’Donnell said that New Paltz was considering a range of possibilities with the understanding that things are likely to change.
“We are planning for a range of plausible scenarios for the fall while recognizing that we need to develop some level of comfort with uncertainty,” he said.
Osmond said there were many questions about how the school days might look and how education might be delivered. She expressed some optimism. There is also the potential for this situation to yield positive changes in public education, too.
“The silver lining is we adapt,” she said. “This gives us a chance to look at the old normal and ask if it made any sense. Public education is a bureaucracy. A lot of times things that happen in a bureaucracy don’t always make sense, it’s just the way we’ve always done it. Hopefully, the silver lining is that we can really try to look at things with fresh eyes all around.”
Assessing the governor
The job the governor has done in addressing public education during the pandemic received mixed reviews. Thomann said that Cuomo’s guidance has been lacking.
“On any given day the governor makes a pronouncement, and then State Ed has to catch up and try to provide something,” he said. “There’s been very little guidance from the governor. There have been pronouncements but very little guidance. And this is really on the back of local school districts. He’s good at charging us with things to do, but he’s not so good at giving us the guidance about how to do it.”
Osmond was less critical, though she did share concerns about the recent partnership between the state and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for next year. “I’ve been very happy with Cuomo’s response to everything,” she said. “But the idea of bringing Bill and Melinda Gates into the educational system, I think State Ed. should have a say. There are just so many more questions than there are answers.”
Join the family! 
