NHP-GCP School Board Adopts 2013-14 Budget

The New Hyde Park-Garden City Park Board of Education has its budget for the 2013-14 school year, one that was described as “a very challenging year,” superintendent Robert Katulak said during the final budget presentation on April 8 at the Manor Oaks School.

“The state and the governor keep on telling us there will not be additional unfunded mandates and then we turn around around and have more added to the budget every year,” Katulak continued in his portion of the presentation, reporting that district administrators had met with NY Sen. Jack Martins four days prior about unfunded mandates.

For 2013-14, the district did not add on any additional personnel, but will be redeploying staff on an as-needed basis. Classes will be kept on the average size of 20-25 students in kindergarten through second grade and 25-29 students in grades 3 to 6. The board also passed a resolution at the March meeting to use a up to $400,000 of its $1.5 million capital reserve fund for security purposes and upgrading its facilities with new doors, panic alarms, intercoms, upgraded public address systems, surveillance equipment and handicapped access. The project is eligible for state aid and will be a separate measure on the May ballot that voters will have to pull the lever on.

The district is also ending the fifth year of its five-year plan that was started in 2008 and will be developing a new three-year plan to help develop budget and focus on learning and instruction.

Due to an increase in state aid, the district will be maintaining the science labs for grades 1-6 with lab specialists as well as all core instruction, Odyssey, math enrichment and academic intervention services.

The district is also putting back a contingency position that is not assigned to any grade level “so if enrollment goes over the cap in a certain area, the board will come back, look at that enrollment and address that with a vote to put that position in,” Katulak said. “I know parents were here, especially from Manor Oaks, concerned about that.”

The superintendent noted that the district was looking at growing numbers in the kindergarten as well as at Hillside Grade School. Another project will be the switch to a virtual network and server through a BOCES aided project which also includes replacing 56 old and obsolete computers throughout the district.

This upcoming year the district will be maintaining kindergarten and academic intervention programs and will be creating integrated common core learning units on curriculum areas. Administrators will have 10 hours of training on APPR each year and work on the creation of formative assessments. The district won a commissioner’s grant that will pair the district with a school in Long Beach to share its practices and “pump in” more money for materials, training conferences and professional development.

In order to determine the district’s levy cap – 3.22 percent – they must begin by taking the prior year’s tax levy ($28,150,071) multiplied by a “tax base growth factor” (100.05) that is designed to, if there’s a lot of growth in the community, raise the levy. The growth increases the levy by about $14,070 to $28,164,146. However, the growth number changes every year and is not set by the district.

Prior year PILOTS (payment in lieu of taxes) are added (NHP-GCP has $49,708), subtract any  capital expense exemptions ($1,013,427). This then gives an adjusted tax levy of $27,200,427.

This adjusted levy is then multiplied by 2 percent (or CPI – 2.4 in January), whichever is lower, yielding $27,744,436. A projected PILOT provided by Nassau County ($55,137) is then subtracted for a tax levy limit of $27,689,299.

Employees retirement (ERS) did not rise but teachers retirement (TRS) did go up, so the district can add $353,429 back in as well as capital exclusions of $1,012,761 and arrive at a levy that cannot exceed $29,055,489, or a $905,418 million difference between the old and new levy, or 3.22 percent.

“The rate is actually going from 18.9 percent of salary to 20.9 percent of salary,” assistant superintendent of finance Michael Frank had previously said of the ERS. “For the TRS... the rates are going from 11.84 percent to 16.25 projected – that’s the state’s projections.”

The district had a budget of $34,494,380 for the 2012-13 school year. The current figure for 2013-14 is $35,525,755, a 2.99 percent increase and 3.22 percent on the levy.

“The last three years have all been under three percent,” Frank said on April 8. “Our increase have all been under three percent and the three years prior to that, they were all in the mid to lower three percent range. That’s a very healthy range to be in especially considering we haven’t done what so many other school districts you might be reading about have done; we have not been spending all of our savings, all of our fund balance and all of our reserves and throwing it towards the problem. We’ve been trying to come up with creative ways of fixing the problem in house to cut our costs to adhere to the financial constraints that are associated with the economic times.”

Salaries will total $18,437,635, a $141,580 increase from 2012-13. The biggest jump will be benefits for employees, going from $9,026,370 to $10,110,395, a $1.084 million increase, or 12.01 percent.

“The benefits line is really the driving force of this budget,” Frank said, noting the jump. “The whole budget’s only going up by 2.99 percent, so benefits alone are causing it to go up even more. So because the benefits are in there, we had to cut other things in order to adhere to the tax cap and get it back down to that 2.99 percent.”

Frank presented a hypothetical example of a teacher with a $100,000 salary for 2012-13 that the district must also pay $11,840 to the state for retirement for that teacher. In 2013-14, if the salary remained the same, the retirement payment would jump to $16,250.

Frank added that if the rates remained flat, the district would be presenting a budget that would be less than 2012-13, including a tax levy which would have gone down by about $129,000 or 0.38 percent.

The district is budgeting $3.73 million in basic state aid, an increase of about $172,000 over 2012-13.

Contracts are going down the most, by a total of $443,360 or 15.2 percent.

“Not all of that is because we were able to make the reductions,” Frank said. “Two hundred and something-thousand of it is because the state changed how they want us to account and handle certain special education classes; $100,000 of that four hundred is because we made the commitment with our capital projects to switch and change our boilers and convert them from boil-only to be duel-purpose so we can handle oil and gas.”

The next biggest monetary decrease is in debt by $57,060 or 2.47 percent. The district will save $100,000 in fuel costs thanks to duel-purpose boilers that can use either oil or cheaper natural gas, saving about 20-25 percent. The transfers lines will be going up by over 57 percent or $141,520, but Frank said that much of the cost was for security-related items.

The district also removed $11 per student for field trip transportation costs due to the purchase of a new bus that will allow the district to conduct some of the runs on its own and no longer need outside transportation.

The difference between a passed budget and a failed one putting the district austerity in which no increase is allowed and $905,000 must be cut is about $94.50 annually on the average tax bill.

If a contingency budget were to be in place, that is if the proposed budget either fails at the polls twice or if the proposed budget fails on the first ballot and the board does not wish to hold a second vote, the board would be forced to cut the budget to arrive at a zero percent levy increase and cut a further $905,000. Under contingency, no equipment purchases can be made, and a per use fee would be charged to all persons and groups wishing to use any of the school facilities or grounds and fields.

“I can assure you that no matter how creative we get with making those cuts, it’s going to affect program,” Frank said. “It’s not a threat, it’s just a reality. There is no way for us to reach that deep into our budget without affecting it.”

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