January 2012
Dear Citizens of Yarmouth,
On January 26th I will present a draft budget
to the School Committee. At that
time I will further explain what I will now outline in this letter.
The development of the 2012-13 budget was done with extra
care, as this coming year is the one we have been anticipating – the year often
referred to as “the cliff,” when federal funds are discontinued and districts
are left with a revenue deficit.
We prepared for this loss of federal funds in a couple of ways. First, we set aside prior year’s fund
balances into a reserve account.
The $126,520 remaining in this tax stability reserve account will be
applied to the 2012-13 budget, decreasing the tax allocation requested.
We also deferred use of the $533,000 Federal Jobs Bill
funds to the 2011-12 budget while others had used at least a portion of these
funds in the 2010-11 school year. Tightening our belt for a time rather than
using Federal funds to increase expenditures, was the prudent thing to do. Eventually, however, whether in the
2011-12 budget or the 2012-13 budget, we would have to see an end to these
Federal funds.
During the development of the 2012-13 budget,
administrators were asked to provide rationales for requests previously taken
for granted. The purpose was to
identify areas that may be considered for reduction that would not result in a
detriment to our instructional program.
Every budget line was scrutinized.
Herb Hopkins, our Director of Business Services, and members of the
administrative team have worked incredibly hard this year to prepare this
budget.
Because the current fiscal year is the last year we will
be paying on the middle school bond, the amount of funds the school department
needs for debt service in 2012-13 will be approximately $450,000 less than in
the current fiscal year. Thus, the
reduction in debt service and the funds in the tax stability reserve account
balance out the loss of Federal funds.
On January 26th I will report a value for our
projected increase in expenditures that considers no additional programs and no
loss of programs. While additional
work is being done on the draft budget at this time, this value is anticipated
to be somewhere in the range of 1.25% to 1.75%. Again, this minimal increase was only possible through
careful planning. Had we not
set aside funds in a tax reserve account, had we used some of our Federal funds
prior to last year, had we not scrutinized every line of every school’s budget,
we would instead be reporting a higher expenditure increase and would be coming
to the taxpayers for a much higher tax allocation.
The draft budget will be considered by the School
Committee and looked at in greater detail during the two budget workshop
sessions scheduled on February 7th and February 14th at
the Rowe School. At that time the School Committee may recommend allocating
additional funds to the budget or make budget reductions. The School Committee eventually votes
on a final budget then proposes this budget to the Town Council, which
considers the School Committee requests and makes budget recommendations to the
community. The community votes on the school and municipal budgets at the
Town Meeting then votes again in a ballot referendum on the school budget.
This year the School Committee’s work will be a
challenge. During this fall’s
program review, a committee researching the benefits of a full day kindergarten
program presented a compelling argument for the consideration of full day
K. Although the committee had not
yet organized community forums for input, the idea was to determine if the
addition of this program would be fiscally feasible at this time. If that were the case, the next step
would be to gather community input to determine if this would be a good idea
for our community. Answering the
question, “is it fiscally feasible at this time?” before answering the
question, “do we want this program in our community?” is the responsible thing to do.
During the January 26th School Committee meeting
I will present information about the effect of the addition of full day K to
the school’s budget and the subsequent effect on a tax increase for Yarmouth
citizens. We will not debate
whether or not full day K should be considered at this time. Instead, School Committee members may
spend time during the 2 subsequent workshop sessions to consider:
