001Good evening everyone. I am Anthony D. Carlo the intram superintendent of schools here at the East Ramo Central School District. Thank you for joining us tonight as um I present to you a budget overview. Um it's important because as we go through this um you'll get a little bit of an understanding of what has gone into formulation of the 2526 school budget, how we got to the number that we're at currently and what are some of the most important parts and aspects of this budget. So, what's really important to understand is that this budget really um looks at how we instruct our students, how we prioritize our resources, um and then what are the pathways for academic success because that's an important piece of what goes into this budget. What's also important this year is
002that um we developed what's called a zerobased budget budget. So, we did not take last year's budget and roll it over and then add an increase. you were starting from actually what your needs are in every aspect of this district, whether it was in a building, whether it was our departments to really tell um the district what your needs specifically are. And then as a result of culminating and putting all that information together, we came up with this year's 25 26 budget. And uh we really looked at these four domains. when we look about school improvement, um, turnaround leadership, we also looked at talent development, instructional transformation, and cultural shift. And as a part of this presentation, you'll see a little bit about all of these aspects within what our needs are as we move
003forward. So, we really looked at a couple of things. Um, and I know that there's a lot of um, speculation out there with regards to the department of education and uh, monies that we get from the federal government. So, we spent some time um, Mr. Stark, who is our assistant superintendent for business and our uh, our assistant superintendent for grants and funding, Mr. Daniel Shanahan. And we looked at our grants and we looked at the monies we were getting. And what we were able to do is to take some of those positions and monies that were in the grant fund, and put them into the A fund, which is our operational budget each year. So that should something happen with regards to funding from the federal government, we've put those monies into our budget so
004we can protect those amounts of money. Um, when we look at this budget, you're going to see a lot about people. Schools are a people business. It's about teachers. You're also going to see about professional materials and professional development that we need. We'll talk to you a little bit about what we're looking to do with capital monies. Um, and then, you know, one of the things that are important that we'll talk about is extra revenues that we've received um from the state under foundation aid. And we'll we'll talk a little bit about that. So, I am not going to go over every single line with you with the numbers that are in front of you tonight, but it's important to understand that there are a variety of different formulas as you can see when it
005comes to the property tax cap that um Mr. Stark, as I mentioned, our assistant superintendent for business has to calculate as you go through it. It talks about the prior years um monies. It talks about tax levy limits. Talks about exclusions. talks about maximum amount of levy. Really, what's important here everybody is the bottom where it says tax cap at 3.15%. Okay, Mr. Carlo, what does that mean? That means that's the maximum am maximum amount of money that we could raise under our tax levy for the 2526 school year. So when all these calculations go into effect, the cap that we could go to is 3.15%. You'll see tonight we haven't gone near the cap, but it's important piece to know that that was the cap for the 2526 school year. This is also important
006and you'll see a little bit more about this later on which may make some more sense because you're looking at a variety of jagged lines. The importance of this is the following. When you look at the last 20 years of the tax rate here at East Ramapo, um you know, back in in 2000, East Ramapo was at the medium, meaning we weren't the highest tax, we weren't the lowest tax, but we were in the middle. As you can see, as the years have gone by, when you get to about 10 years ago, as I mentioned, you could see the downward slope. So um about 20145 you can see the downward trend and now in 2024 25 by far we are the lowest taxed uh school district when it comes to taxing um our residents. And
007now this is the important piece when we talk about school aid. There's a lot of discussion out and about with the public with regards to oh my gosh you have all these monies right now. How does this happen? Well, there's a variety of things and it's important for you to understand both myself and my team. Um, because we're all new. We were not here last year at this time. I cannot speculate what happened, why it happened, what the discussions were, but it happened. So last year at this time there was discussions in this district that you couldn't pay your bills. You couldn't have you couldn't pay payroll within the latter part of the school year and into the summer. And as a result, many many conversations took place day in and day out. And what
008wind up happening is that the state and the school district looked at some of these ARPA funds from the federal government under COVID and were able to use some of those funds to be able to keep things afloat. That's an important piece of understanding that. But over the last couple of years, um, the the the state has really, and I mentioned this back in the fall, really looked at foundation aid because East Ramipo has been shortch changed for many, many, many years. And as a result, over the last couple of years, but most importantly this year, okay, when it came to foundation aid, um, East Ramo got a windfall of money. Plus, we were not coding our English language learners properly and we were losing out funding with that. So, when you look at that
009combined, you know, the betterment and foundation aid and the coding of our L's, you see a substantial amount of money, almost $16 million that came into uh the district for state aid. Um, last year in the fall, not 24 but 23. Um, you know, there were conversations also about the state aid numbers were going up. And so you can see that yes, indeed, over the last couple of years, we've gotten far more state aid that we've gotten in the past. And you'll see in this budget when we get to the final number that we want to use that state aid additions to really enhance the educational framework of what we do here at East Ramapo. Now, this is the other important number. So if you look at that first number, we are asking this year
010for the 2526 school budget a 0% increase. Zero. And you're going to see the things we can do for a 0% increase. I am keenly aware of a lot of upset in the community when it comes to last year and you know budget and commissioner being involved. Um and if if you think about it right last year the budget went down the first time I believe it was 1.99 approximately the second vote it passed at.99 now it's zero so I I I truly believe this is a very fiscally responsible budget it's what the district needs to move forward but yet I clearly understand there's a lot of upsetment out there you could be upset You want to be upset with what happened with the commissioner and the adding of additional tax levy money. You want
011to be upset that you you know you um were not told the truth last year. But let's not take it out on kids. Let's not take it out on kids. This is zero. I think is far more than is fiscally responsible. That's my job as a superintendent. My job is to present a budget that's fiscally responsible that meets the needs of the students. And we're able to do this at 0%. So we'll continue. Now we take a look at the budget breakdown. And this is really important because I mentioned to you about property taxes. So if you go back to 22 23 the majority of the revenue that we received to operate came from property tax and then state aid supplemented that where now to 2526 that actually is reversed. We are getting more monies
012that are coming from the state to help fund East Ramipo than we're actually getting from property taxes. That's important. So that's why you will see this year we have additional foundation aid um and state aid that we haven't had in the past. It's pretty ex explanatory here why that has happened because as the state aids money has has gone up property tax um levy has gone down. That's a really important um diagram to see. Now, I mentioned to you at the beginning of this presentation, we are a people business and there's a lot of discussion out and about that, oh, it's going to be impossible, Mr. D. Carlo, for your your team to fill over 240 vacancies. But let's have an honest conversation about why we're here, right? So if you have 10 years of
013failed budgets or low budgets that haven't kept up with the needs of the district, nobody's coming to East Ramapo and leaving a tenur position to come to a district that's not sure from year to year whether they're going to be operational or not. I just told you what happened last year. The other struggle is because we never know what's happening with the budget till almost the end of June. We're then going out to look for positions and everybody's already taking positions other places. So this year when I went to look at some of the staffing and some of the things that we're looking at 10 years ago back in 2014 you had these positions were in the budget but then they were cut cut cut because the fact that their budgets were defeated and you
014know we couldn't go out and hire these positions. So we are really looking at bringing back positions. As you know, we are a an L district. 60% or more of our students are ELELLL learners, right? English as a as a second language. So, we really are trying to meet the needs of our students by putting in more support services um in our classrooms throughout the day, help supporting students so that we don't have to pull students out of class. We have teachers working together with their teacher assistants, with other teachers, whether that's instructional coaches in literacy, whether that's instructional coaches in math, whether that's directors or department chairs to help out in our middle schools, in our high schools. So, you will see all of these positions that that really are needed and we're asking
015um that we really can be able to, I believe, move East Ramapo in the direction that it needs to go. Second piece throughout the district in our departments when you're cutting also you're cutting clerical, you're cutting workers. Um, and many of our departments are in dire need of extra support. For example, transportation. We're the second largest day-to-day operation of transportation in the state of New York, second to New York City. Yet our transportation department in nowhere near has the volume of people we need to keep up with the demands on a day-to-day basis. Same thing with many of our departments. We need extra people to help out that day-to-day operations to be more user friendly with the public. So, as we go through this, you will see a variety of different vacancies that we're going
016to need. The second thing that we're hoping is going to be helpful is we're going to go out in the market earlier. Like we have postings out now in Olas. Um we are working this actually in this room in this very room Saturday from 10 to 3. We're doing a job fair. We are dire need of clerical workers. We're in need of teacher assistants. Um we're in need of monitors, aids, um custodial workers, building substitutes. So, we are really working hard to fill these positions starting now and of course going right through the summer. But it's important to understand why we're in this situation when it comes to hiring, why we need these positions, a little bit of a history of why we haven't been able to to to to hire people over the last
017decade. And we really are just looking to bring things back to where they should be so that we can run a a district in the most effective um manner and that meets the needs of our students and our staff. And then again, we continue to go on and when we're looking at some of what I talked to you before about 15 minutes ago and working with um Mr. Shanahan and our our uh assistant superintendent for business, Mr. Stark. You'll see some of these examples of monies that we are now taking from grants and putting them into our A fund which they do belong and actually then helps us out should something happen on a federal level. Now, I talked a little bit about hiring. Um we have um worked hard with working with local colleges
018and universities and going out because here's what I said before. The reality of the matter is we're going to be going out and looking for teachers that are coming out of school that want to come to East Ramapo and want to make their home for many years to come. And we can only do that with going out recruiting um interviewing and getting many of these new teachers on board as quickly as we can. So, we've been at job fairs throughout the uh lower Hudson Valley in um trying to recruit our teachers. We're also doing job fairs when we're looking at monitors, teachers assistants, and the like. We're working with our high schools because we know many of our high schoolers upon graduation can come back and want to work with us in a variety of
019different um roles that I just discussed with you. Um we have to go through a thorough process of screening, setting up committees, having the committees meet with the candidates and then those um people that are recommended, going to um the board and then hiring and onboarding people as we go through the process. This is a little bit about the monies that we spend and you can see here, you know, we're we're we're looking at a variety of different things. Again, you'll see some of these red numbers because those are things that we repurposed um and put back where they should be. And that's another issue. Um I want to commend Mr. Stark and the team because um they really worked hard to put things where they belong. Um Mr. Stark presented the board of education
020with the 117page document of every single line, why the line is what it is, with notes on it. Um, last year we went to go look at the budget. Many, many, many lines were empty. We couldn't figure out where what was where. Um, and we want to make sure we're we're we really are um using this year as that baseline for really sound budget development as we move forward. And you can see um what that looks like in our this year's budget and then next year's budget, the increase um of about uh approximately $9.6 6 million when it comes to expenditures. And then this kind of summarizes all of what we're looking at with the expenditure chart. So again, we're a people business. So when you look at your your general education, special education, employee
021benefits, um, and the like, the majority of that is teachers and, uh, professional, um, people who work in the district and professional staff. And then our transportation budget is about 19 and a.5%. As I mentioned to you before, we transport over 40,000 students a day. So, um you know, that's kind of an overview of the budget for this year. Um again, there's going to be plenty of I'm sure discussions coming up April 8th when we have our next uh board meeting um with the board of education. As you know, um the superintendent presents his or her budget. I presented the budget over the last month and a half. All our departments came up, talked about why they need what they need, showed the public a little bit about the monies that were put aside this
022year, what we're looking for next year. Um and you can actually go on and see those presentations if you miss them. But um you know we are going to work hard right until the budget vote date which is I believe May 20th coming up. We'll be out and about with the community and um again any questions or concerns that may come up. You can of course feel free to email or call Mr. Stark um and we'll be updating you along the way over the next couple of weeks. So thank you very much for tuning in. I appreciate your your time and your wanting to see and gain a better understanding of our 2526 budget. I want to thank my team for all their hard work behind the scenes putting this budget together. Uh and I
023want to thank you, the community, um for listening, for allowing me to be as transparent as possible throughout the course of this year. And um again, thank you. Have a great night and go east Ramipo.