Manchester school board approves budget

Andrew McKeever

GNAT-TV News Project

MANCHESTER — School directors unanimously approved a school district budget Tuesday, Jan. 3, that calls for $11.142 million in total spending for the coming fiscal year, a 5.8 percent decrease from last year’s $11.826 million budget. Despite the reduction in the total size of the budget, the tax rate Manchester residents will pay will rise more than 10 cents per $100 of assessed property value, from $1.566 to nearly $1.67, assuming voters approve the budget during March Town Meeting.

Most of that increase, about six cents, is due to a lowering of the town’s common level of appraisal rate, or CLA, a yardstick used under Act 68, the state’s educational finance law, which measures how closely a municipality’s local appraisals are to the actual Fair Market Value.  The CLA is used to equalize education taxes statewide with the goal of having properties of equal value pay equal amounts of school taxes. Manchester’s CLA declined slightly, from 104.25 percent, to 100.64 percent, which is close to what the actual fair market value of properties are assessed for. But that decline also puts upward pressure on the school tax rate.

An additional three cents is attributable to larger secondary education costs, directors were told. Greater numbers of students than expected in the secondary schools the district pays tuition for drove an 11.3 percent  increase there, from $3.571 million to $3.976 million. Changes in the way the school district accounts for special education spending were another factor.

The school board also voted to add $85,000 to the budget proposal they started with, to pay for a learning specialist position, which could be one full-time position or two part-time positions, for reading and math for students the middle school grades. Federal funding may be available to defray some of those costs, but School Superintendent Jacquelyne Wilson was careful to note there was no guarantee of that.

Board director Steve Murphy, attending the meeting via conference call, opened the discussion on adding the position by asking co-principals Martin and Irene Nadler what they would like to see in the budget “in a perfect world.”

Martin Nadler replied with the request for the learning specialists for the middle school grades, and that idea found favor with the board members.

“For the past several years now, we’ve been doing everything we can to resist increases … we’ve cut some things and now we have the opportunity with some quality leadership in Marty and Irene to have a benefit that makes sense,” Murphy said in response.

Nadler termed the addition one that enhanced the budget.

The budget also includes $55,000 for the bus sinking fund, but that will be voted separately from the main budget during March Town Meeting. The school district will hold its annual meeting on Monday, March 6, and the $55,000 for the bus fund will be decided off the floor.

There was good news on the enrollment front at the Manchester Elementary Middle School, where the number of students had been expected to decline or remain flat. Instead, it showed a modest rise, from 379 students as of Dec. 1, 2015 to 388 as of Dec. 1, 2016. An additional five students were enrolled since then, Nadler told the board and the audience attending the meeting, bringing the numbers in the preK-8th grades to 393. This will help cut the rate of per pupil spending, which is one of the key drivers of school taxes.

The budget also eliminates MEMS’s assistant principal position, currently held by Kimberly Tenner, reflecting the fact the school district hired the Nadlers, a husband and wife team, as co-principals, and anticipates bringing them back for a second year. Three school administrators was one too many, the board decided. The Nadlers were hired last summer to replace to outgoing Thomas Quinn, who left after one year at MEMS.

Voters will also be faced with electing school directors for both the current school board and directors for the new merged Taconic and Green District, which may be one of the outcomes of Town Meeting as well. The new merged district, if approved by voters, would join the current districts of Manchester, Dorset, Danby, Mt. Tabor, Sunderland and the Mountain Towns RED (Londonderry, Weston, Landgrove, Peru) into one district, with one 13-member board which will develop one budget for all the former individual districts. Voters from all the towns will be asked to elect a director from each of the nine towns. Four additional “at-large” directors will be voted in by voters from all the towns. The directors, however can only  come from Danby, Dorset, Londonderry or Manchester. This was done in an effort to reflect voter proportionality of the four largest towns in the yet-to-be-formed district. The four at-large directors could conceivably come from one town, or be divided across the four towns in any combination.

In addition, for the final time, if the merged district is approved, voters will elect directors for three slots on the current Manchester School District Board. Candidates could conceivably run for seats on both the new merged district board, and for the local school board. They cannot however, run both for at-large seats on the new merged board and for the single seat reserved for each of the towns.

The budget the current board crafted for the coming fiscal year will also be their final one, if the new district is approved. The new district will consist of one board and budget will be developed for all the towns and schools within the district.

Superintendent Wilson said the next six weeks leading up to town meeting would see public outreach to inform residents of what would change should the new Taconic and Green district get a thumbs up from voters during town meeting voting.

The message to be gotten out to the community is not one of ‘do we like it or don’t we like it,’ she said.

Things won’t stay the same as they have been if voters reject the merger proposal, she added.

“It’s going forward,” she said, referring to the Act 46 consolidation statute process the Legislature passed in 2015 and amended slightly in early 2016, which sets forth a timeline for districts to submit merger proposals that yield tax benefits to those districts if ultimately approved.

“We either make a shift now and reap some tax benefits from that or we’ll have to submit an alternative plan by November, 2018,” she said.