Governor Paterson has proposed mid-year cuts in school aid. Among his proposals:

Reduce Formula-Based Aid. Reductions of state aid to school districts, ranging between 3 percent and 10 percent for individual districts. Consistent with the principles underlying School Aid, the level of reductions would be based on each individual school district's educational needs and their fiscal capacity to meet those needs. Measures used to allocate the percentage reduction include school district wealth, concentration of at-risk students, and residential property tax burden. (2008-09 School Year Savings: $800 million, 2009-10 School Year Savings: $800 million).

How much aid does the Newburgh School District get? Here are some excerpts from
http://www.nysed.gov/stateaid/dist/exec08/441600.html:

DISTRICT CODE: 441600
DISTRICT NAME: NEWBURGH

2008-09 ESTIMATED AIDS:
FOUNDATION AID 93,734,763

Total including Universal Pre-K, Transportation, BOCES, Building Reorg Incentive, etc:
TOTAL W/ BLDG, REORG, EX 132,558,846

The mid-year cuts are unlikely to be passsed by the New York State Legislature.

Meghan E. Murphy at the Times Herald-Record reports on September 17 that "Newburgh School District comes in under budget on bond".

At the completion of a three-year, $50 million facilities improvement bond, the Newburgh School District reported coming in about $3.1 million under budget.

A report by Armlin, Damon & McMordie said that all of the 20 projects in the bond approved in 2005 came in at or under budget. The remaining funds can be spent on extra items already approved during the project-planning process.

An additional $1.5 million is also being held in reserve for potential renovations at the Chestnut Street School.

$3 million is certainly a tidy amount to have left over for those little "extra items".

From the minutes of the Newburgh Enlarged City School District Board of Education meeting of June 24, 2008:

WHEREAS, the voters of the District voted down the school budget presented by the Board of Education for approval at the Annual Distric Meeting on May 20, 2008; and

WHEREAS, the Board has decided to adopt a contingency budget to pay for the costs of ordinary contingent expenses for the 2008-2009 school year, within the limitations of s2023 of the Education Law;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that pursuant to s2023 of the Education Law, the Board of Education hereby adopts a contingency budget in the amount of $226,375,874, to pay for the ordinary contingent expenses of the School District for the 2008-2009 school year and authorizes the levy of a tax therefor;
...

So the budget in effect for 2008-2009 is $226,375,874.
The budget voted down in May 2008 was $227,777,046.
The difference is $1,401,172; about 0.62%.

Monetarily, the budget vote did not matter so much. It matters in other ways.

So according to the Times Herald Record more people voted no than voted yes for accepting the proposed budget for the Newburgh School District on May 20.

Today, May 22, 2008 the Record reports:

NEWBURGH -- After an all-day canvass yesterday, the Newburgh School District budget still failed, this time by 62 votes instead of 13. The district put to voters an almost $228 million budget, requiring an additional $4.5 million in revenue from property taxes. The board made no comments when accepting the vote last night as to whether it will hold another vote or use a contingency budget for next year.

Meghan E. Murphy

Any questions?

The Sentinel published an interesting letter in it's May 13, 2008 issue. If you have an interest in the Newburgh School District you would do well to subscribe to this small paper.

Kudos To Board Of Education

To the Editor and Readers:

Attending a recent Board of Education meeting was enlightening. Members of the Board are to be commended for having handouts ready and being willing to answer questions. The budget presented is another matter. I have three comments:

1. The amount budgeted for transportation is based on an old contract with the bus company. It calculates gas at less than $2.50 a gallon. We were told that if the bus company pays more than that amount, the contract allows the company to ask the School District for reimbursement. Now gas is over $3.75 a gallon. Many say it will be over $4 soon. The proposed school budget offers 'pie in the sky' transportation costs.

2. The proposed budget includes a number of new positions. Half the first grade classes are budgeted to get classroom aides and four positions are budgeted for library staff -- mostly for outreach. Now these are good things. Outreach is important and I am sure that every K-6 teacher would like a classroom aide. BUT... these are tough times. Does the Board of Education realize what is going on in the economy? The private sector is shedding jobs. Families have found second incomes disappearing. Overtime hours are down. Gas and food are up. People are struggling. Of course we want the best for our children but even families are cutting back on 'extras' for the children. Do we really need to add full time positions this year? Remember that new positions will be included in next year's salary raises so it is not just a one-year commitment. Can't we wait a year or two for the economy to improve before we commit to creating any new positions?

3. It came out at the meeting that the administration has acted in opposition to last year's election results. If you remember voters were asked to approve busing ALL students -- even those who live within a mile of the school. The votes said, "No." The proposition was defeated. But the administration decided the voters were mistaken and ordered such busing to be done anyway. The Board was asked how many schools were involved. The question was not answered -- though two schools were mentioned by name during the discussion.

I note that no administrator or board members called a public meeting to explain this action. There was not even a letter or press release telling the voters there would be action in opposition to their vote. They just did it. One person asked if such action by the administration was legal. No one knew. My own concern is that it could be precedent setting. Why do we vote? Does voting count?

Conclusions: I think that we need to tell the Board to go back to the drawing table. We deserve a budget on real numbers. And we need to reconsider creating new positions during tough economic times... or we need to see some very strong rationale as to why so many new positions are a necessity in tough economic times.

We also need to let the Board of Education and the administration know that no one should ever decide in secret to nullify election results -- in whole or in part. Those who vote deserve better.

Thank you for reading. I hope that you will consider taking action in regards to these things.

Kate Lindemann

Ms. Lindemann raises excellent points. A rationale for the creation of new positions, how does that sound to you?

Here is proposed budget and tax data for the Newburgh School District, excerpted from 2008 Property Tax Report Card Data (Part I - Budget, Levy and Enrollment):

There are lots of caveats regarding this data. It is self-reported and neither audited nor verified. For full info see the disclaimer at the NYSED site.

Some on-target criticism of the public budget meetings required of New York State school districts from Ben Rubin on the Hallmonitor blog:

With school board budget hearings starting up this week in Rockland, I wanted to comment on how ridiculous I find the timing of these meetings. I worked at a newspaper in Connecticut for the past two years, and in that state, budget hearings happened before the boards of education adopted their budgets. The school boards could then alter their plans according to how enraged the public was. People in East Hartford, the town I covered, would come out and assail their town officials, call the town a mess and complain about taxes. And afterwards things would change in the budget-small things, but things nonetheless. That doesn't happen in New York. The hearings happen after the budgets get adopted, so residents can yell and scream all they want about higher taxes, it won't change anything. They'll just have to vote it up or down at the end of the month and that's that.
...

Some districts, including several of those adjacent to the Newburgh School Distrcit, have had several meetings with the public leading up to the presentation of the budget.

Several clicks away from the home page of the Newburgh School District, you will find this important information:

Notice is hereby given that a Public Hearing on the Budgets for the Newburgh Enlarged City School District and the Newburgh Free Library has been scheduled by the Board of Education to be held in the Auditorium of the Board of Education/Library Complex, 124 Grand Street, Newburgh, NY on Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 7:00 p.m.

The proposed General Fund Budget is in the amount of $227,777,046. The meeting this evening may be a good place to find out more about that...

On May 20 New York State Schools hold budget votes and elections for open Board of Education positions.

Unlike the Newburgh Enlarged Central School District several nearby districts have involved the public in budget planning and have presented information to the public well in advance of submitting a budget to be voted upon.

The Cornwall Central School District established a School Budget Advsory Committee "to solicit community feedback regarding the budget process". They have held public meetings with well detailed minutes.

The Enlarged City School District of Middletown has put the slides from three budget presentations from February and March online.

The Washingtonville Central School District has their proposed 2008-09 budget online in both summary and line item formats as well as two budget presentations from February and one from March.

This may be a tough year to get voter approval of budgets. Getting the public involved, allowing and answering questions, and providing information freely probably improve the likelihood of approval.