District Leaders Make Final Push for Budget

Considering rising expenses, declining revenues and a property tax cap environment not just for the next academic year, but for the next several years, changed the way the district approached budget development for the better, Katonah Lewisboro district leaders told Patch last week.

“I can already start to get a picture of next year and see how we’ll be OK,” said Mark Lipton, school board president.

Lipton said it was the first time the district had looked at the budget in a multi-year fashion, which helped them address the challenges of the “structural deficit”—where the district’s spending exceeds the money that can be raised through taxes—and stay below the property tax cap.

On Tuesday, locals will vote on the , which totals $112,996,167 and increases spending by 1.78 percent over last year’s budget. It raises the tax levy, which is the total amount of property taxes to be collected, by 2.09 percent, which is below the district's calculated tax levy cap of 3.52 percent (including exemptions) set by the state.

In his final budget presentation to the public last week, Superintendent of Schools Paul Kreutzer said bringing health care costs down was perhaps the biggest mitigating factor this year in keeping costs down, a point he emphasized in an interview with Patch.

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“Our collective bargain with the and plus bringing in a health care consultant brought the million-dollar-plus increases we’ve seen in recent years to only $179,000 this year,” he said.

On the 25 staff positions eliminated in the budget, Kreutzer said they were more than he would have liked.

“The worst part is for someone to lose their livelihood, and this was a reduction of staff for financial reasons that was disproportionate to the enrollment drop. But I believe once we get past this vote, we will be on a 4-5 year horizon of  consistent, less volatile budget cycles.”

Lipton said this budget will help the district stay on a continuum of providing an excellent education for students.

“For an organization this size, one of my concerns is that it takes us a long time to move, and this budget has some key features—like money for teacher training—to help us keep moving. When you’re already performing at a high level and your students are doing well and your curriculum is solid, you have to look at how else can you make things better, and one of the ways is to do that is professional development. I think we’ll see significant impact in the classroom in the next couple of years.”

Responding to critics who say the district hasn’t done enough to reduce the number of administrators at the top, Kreutzer said they haven’t been able to do that at the middle and high school because of enrollment.

“The numbers of students have not dropped at the middle and high school. Where enrollment is down, the assistant principals have been removed—at all elementary schools except for Katonah, and it is in our long range plan to switch to the Teacher on Special Assignment model if we have attrition there.” Kreutzer added that unfunded mandates like APPR (the new teacher evaluation system) and state testing force the district to add a layer of cost to the community.

In order to “beat the cap,” expenses need to be brought in line with revenues, which Lipton said is achievable.

"Of course, we'll need to strike good deals with our bargaining units," he said.

In addition, the leaders said, energy savings realized from building renovations would help narrow the gap. Kreutzer laid out the last week, and said the repairs will be paid for not by raising taxes but with funds leftover in a capital reserve account and through money saved through collective barganing. Voter approval is needed to move the funds from a reserve for spending on the

Kreutzer said he felt the district was “exceptionally well-positioned” but shouldn’t rest on its laurels.

“The problem is you don’t want to stop and say, that’s good enough. We have to continually be innovative and improve ourselves. We have to do things differently to move forward—like infusing technology into our curriculum, and providing professional development for our staff. We are in great shape but we are looking to set a new personal record.”