School Budget
2009-2010
April 4, 2009

On April 21st voters will have a chance to weigh in on the school budget. For the first time in memory the budget is actually lower than last year's. The portion that taxpayers must pay however has increased.

The operating budget is the total budget minus the debt service (payments on debt). The levy is the taxpayers' contribution. It is the amount you will see on the ballot.

The reason the levy has increased while the budget has decreased is because other sources of "income", carry over of surplus ($2.9M) and interest on investments ($740K), have decreased.

Under state law the maximum the budget can increase over last year is 4% plus an adjustment for the number of students. This budget has increased by $186K under that amount.

There have been some increases in expenditures. Teachers' salaries have increased 4.65% and there have also been increases in fixed costs such as insurance premiums and charter school tuitions. BOE president Nagy stated that our teachers' starting salary is the lowest in the county.

With the levy capped at 4%, many expenses increasing by more than 4% and less revenue available there had to be reductions somewhere. That's simple math. Thus there have been a number of cuts to last year's budget including; 10 teaching positions, 10 kindergarten paraprofessionals, 2 library paraprofessionals, 10 custodians, 6 security guard positions, 1 temporary clerk position, 4 secretarial positions, 1 adult education position, 1 flex nurse, 1.6 elementary school arts positions and freezing the vacant Director of Personnel, guidance counselor and vice principal positions.

Many of the above reductions are specifically required by new state regulations and are controversial. The school day will now have 8 periods instead of 9. This will be accomplished by making the periods longer, not by shortening the day. Superintendant Seto states that this will save $784K. High school Principal Lucks states that it will help the students who are struggling to be more competent in the courses. At the March 31st budget hearing approximately 40 students and parents voiced strong opposition to this change because it will reduce the availability of advance placement and arts classes to many of our high achieving students. Also controversial is that classes with fewer than 13-15 students will be canceled.

Should one vote yes or no for the budget? TUF has always maintained that it is the responsibility of society to pay for the public education system. We have also in the past stood up to and pointed out waste. We have supported good budgets and even done mailings to oppose bad budgets. The question becomes, is this the right amount?

The BOE states that further cuts in spending will mean further cuts in education. Unfortunately this is the argument that the BOE always uses to urge a yes vote on the budget. That stopped last year when Mr. Seto came on board. In fact last year he pointed out additional non-education areas that would hurt if cut but were not vital. That new style of leadership has led us to cautiously increase our trust.

Another event that has increased our trust is that the BOE final commissioned the outside review of operations that TUF's Phil Kramer pushed for 3 years. The review outlined a potential for approximately $5M/year in savings. A few of the suggestions were used in this budget but there has not yet been time to implement most. That requires planning. Thus we believe to date the BOE has utilized the outside review as much as possible.

Given all these factors we believe that the budget is already cutting into education and that there is little wiggle room available this year. It has always been convenient for our detractors to portray TUF as anti-education. That was never true. We always wanted our Townships children to get the best education we could afford. We believe that further cuts in the budget will mean further cuts in education beyond an acceptable level.

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