Pelham BOE Adopts New Budget Proposal

From Pelham Board of Education: The Board of Education on Tuesday, April 18 adopted the 2017-18 proposed budget that totals $72,780,000. The budget would raise the tax levy by 1.98 percent, which is below the state mandated tax cap of 2.14 percent.

A public hearing on the budget will be held on May 2 at 8:15 pm in the Middle School library and the annual budget referendum and Board of Education election is scheduled for Tuesday, May 16.

“The Board of Education has considered this budget very carefully over the last several weeks and I believe that it represents a fiscally responsible path to continue building on the goals of our five-year Strategic Plan,” said Board of Education President Marianne Gilland. “I urge the community to review this budget and come out and vote on May 16.”

The projected homestead tax rate is $18.88 per $1,000 assessed valuation and the projected non-homestead tax rate is $26.12 per $1,000 assessed valuation.

Among the highlights in the proposed budget, which can be viewed in full at www.pelhamschools.org, is the addition of the Foreign Language Elementary School program for 2 nd and 3 rd grade students. The FLES program, which was recommended by the World Language Task Force, would hire two teachers to begin supplementing the regular elementary school curriculum with Spanish instruction starting next school year. It is anticipated that the FLES program will expand to the 4 th and 5 th grades in subsequent years.

“After studying a variety of options for incorporating a foreign language at the elementary level, FLES emerged as the best fit for our District,” said Board of Education Vice President Madeline Smith, who co- chaired the World Language Task Force. “FLES blends Spanish language into the regular lesson plans, so that our Spanish instructors will be working alongside our students’ regular teachers. It is exciting to have an opportunity to bring this program to Pelham.”

In addition to the FLES program, the preliminary budget maintains favorable class sizes across the District. It would also fund several initiatives, such as the continuation and expansion of the District’s mindfulness programming, including the School Yoga Project and piloting the responsive classroom framework at Hutchinson School. Additionally, it includes new course offerings at PMHS such as Applied Statistics, Calculus, Transitional Algebra, Mandarin 3, AP Computer Science Language, Instruction and Coding and the purchase of new social studies textbooks for grades 5 and 6.

The budget also calls for using approximately $200,000 from the capital reserve to bring Friendship Field up to regulation standards. This project would entail installing a turf infield, which is expected to also reduce long-term maintenance costs. The budget would also create a varsity boys swim team and hire an assistant cross country coach.

As in previous years, the Board of Education and District have continued to reduce the amount of fund balance used to balance the budget, which is down $15,000 from last year for a total of $810,000.

“I’d like to thank our Business Office staff, administrators, building principals and the Board of Education for their hard work in developing this budget,” said Superintendent Dr. Peter Giarrizzo. “This budget is consistent with the goals of our Strategic Plan, includes significant enhancements to our programming and is responsible to our taxpayers.”

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