School Board Votes for Budget, Urges Community to Follow

The five members of the Ridgewood Board of Education unanimously voted to approve the district's proposed $86.77 million general fund budget on Monday night, saying although it's a budget with question marks, it enables the district to continue its excellence in education while positioning it well for the next budget year.

The average taxpayer would see a rise of $191 per average assessed home at just a shade under $800,000 should the village vote in favor of the budget on April 27. The general fund tax levy is $81,323, 178 with an added $3,172,996 in debt service. Should the budget fail to pass–as it did last year–the council could force cuts to be made.

Superintendent Dr. Daniel Fishbein and Assistant Superintendent for Business Angelo DeSimone elaborated on specifics of the budget Monday night, which initially looked grim with numerous personnel cuts potentially in store. But then things changed.

The evolution of the budget

"As we worked on this budget and finally got the and we realized for the first time in two years that we weren't going to have to make cuts to the budget as far as personnel and programming," Fishbein said, "I think all the administrators were able to breathe a sigh of relief. Because it has been a real challenge in the past two years."

Fishbein discussed some of the mechanisms and procedures it used to develop its budget and spoke of the challenges and future initiatives.

Chief among the challenges is the undetermined cost of health care and benefits. "We basically had a zero-growth budget," Fishbein said if contractually-obligated health and benefit costs were not factored. The line item, which increased from $12.7 million to about $14.0 million includes social security, Medicare, pensions, PERS (non-professional employees) benefits, tuition reimbursement, professional development, workman's comp.

"It's a little bit similar to last year but not as drastic," he said of the health benefits cost driver.

While Fishbein was told by the district's broker the possible 12 percent increase is "regular medical inflation," there's a chance it could rise in the next few months with claims coming in. The district was able to take a $327,000 insurance waiver, about half of which was for health costs, but the district will not be taking it. It can bank it for future use.

"You haven't given yourselves much wiggle room," said resident Chris Cisar during public comment. "It scares me to look at how razor thin you guys are operating here," he said. He asked if employees pay into health and benefits. "Our board has had contributions from employees for 20 years. I'm sure at one point we were the only district," Fishbein responded.

Cisar said considering the times and that an average family of four will pay $16,000 per year, making employees pay more "is something to consider".

However challenging health care is, there were many relatively bright spots of the budget for administrators. Beyond the obvious pluses that there were no programming or personnel changes, Fishbein said the restoration of state aid has helped restore funding for future capital projects.

"When you only have $600,000 in a big district like this, projects can be a bit of a moving target."

The old section of Ridge may get a new roof, he said, and a boiler may be replaced at the antiquated Education Center.

The superintendent and DeSimone touted some of the efficiency areas in the district, from the outsourcing of custodial staff–something neighboring Glen Rock is just now wrestling with–to consortion bidding for all supplies, to outsourced cafeteria and landscaping services.

"Over the past two years we've been able to build programs so we don't have to send children out of the district," Fishbein said of special education, which will be just over $16 million of the 2011-2012 proposed budget. "It's been a big cost-savings for us."

There have been some changes since the March 21 presentation to the village council. DeSimone said the district's Central Administration budget was over the allowable cap.

"We were over the administrative cost limitation by about $170,000. So what I had to do was move money out of the administrative areas and put it into instructional areas." The district could also receive $18,000 in reimbursements through a new state requirement of identifying the 60 families in the district that qualify for Medicaid because they have a special education student in the district.

Some of the initiatives going forward are to upgrade textbooks in English, as well as replacing outdated technology and doing more training on Skyward, which will have a customized dashboard for parents.

School board reaction

"I see it as an austerity budget," Charles Reilly said. "I think this budget is really on the edge."

"It's always difficult to weigh the impact of these cuts on children. We have high standards. Our standard is 'excellence in education'. That requires resources. Unfortunately, this budget will minimally compromise excellence," the longtime school board member said.

Reilly also said it was unfortunate there wasn't more money available for capital projects, which argued "would catch up with us" in the future and he expressed cautious optimism for the undetermined costs in the budget.

"There are a few threads that could easily snap," Reilly said. Health care costs and labor costs are still undetermined and even state aid, Reilly said, is a "question mark" because of the pending court decision on the state aid cut of 2010-2011.

But he was in full support of the budget, remarking that he believes it's the lowest percentage increase on property taxes since 1986. "I think that reflects a lot of hard work," and effort to maintain the excellent education for the community, he said.

Board member Laurie Goodman said she felt the budget was appropriate both as a parent and taxpayer, coining it a "bare minimum budget."

"As a parent, I appreciate how it keeps our educational programs and staff in tact and includes a minimal amount of capital projects to take care of our buildings." As a taxpayer, Goodman thanked the administrators for "the smallest tax increase in decades."

"I support this budget. I see it also as a maintenance budget," 15-year board member Sheila Brogan said. "I think the takeaway though," Brogan said, is honoring the taxpayers who are supporting this budget, which is 93.7 percent of funding sources. She appreciated the board and administrator's ability to control areas of growth.

"For every one administrator we have 207 students. That's considerably higher than other districts."

Despite what she called hard cuts in recent years, "We continue to see student achievement. That's what it's really about," she said. "This budget is doing what we need to do this year to continue."

Board Vice President Robert Hutton said the assumptions built into the budget are large, and he said there may be more work to do, as a half-percent difference could be a large one. Overall though, of the budget presented he said: "We have managed our costs. Ridgewood continues to supply a quality education to those students in our care day in, day out."

The district continues to negotiation its contract with the teacher's union and it's budgeted zero percent increases for the largest cost to the district.

President Michele Lenhard said in a statement that the state has not made its proper overall contributions and added that new laws have made things highly difficult for schools in crafting budgets fair to both students and taxpayers alike.

"The work of the board of education is not finished, as the educational and financial expectations of our community cannot be achieved without addressing rising financial costs in health care and salary. Good planning and a little bit of luck has put us in the eye of the storm right now. Hard work will keep us in tact moving forward."

The district will be holding more budget presentations and coffee meetings through the month of April before the vote on Wednesday, April 27.

"I support the 2011-2012 budget and encourage voters to do the same," Lenhard said.