001Okay. So, uh, good evening and thank you for joining us for the 2026 2027 budget hearing. Um, I'm Doug Lawrence. I'm the superintendent of schools. This is Kate Hooper. She's our business administrator. Um, we're going to be spending a little bit of time with you tonight going through our budget proposal. Um, and hopefully inform you a little bit of where we landed and and why. Uh, I do think it's in important to uh throw out there ahead of time that we're still waiting on some things from the state, which we'll get into in a little bit, but um, for the most part, we're we're ready on our end to move forward with with our budget. Oh, maybe it's the whole thing. >> I think you got to click click on it cuz the mouse is
002down and you see the the bar. >> There we go. Okay. So, uh, just wanted to start with our mission and vision as as a district because obviously everything that we do each and every day should be reflected in in this and, um, really especially as we go through the budget season um, making sure that we're supporting our students and our staff properly. So the mission of our district is the Fulton city or the Fulton school community will empower students to develop the knowledge and skills to become respectful, responsible, productive citizens who are committed to lifelong learning. And our vision is uh our vision is to create a learning organization that is the centerpiece of the community where all are welcomed and held to standards of excellence that foster hope and resilience for the future.
003Also wanted to start with really our demographics. Uh a good portion of this does tell part of our story as far as our our budget goes and some of our funding from New York State. So as you'll see, we do have what would be considered a declining enrollment as a district. Um we've had this trend where it's slightly declining over the past few years. Um in this case, a change in 80 plus students is what's considered declining at at the state level. Our governor has said several times that um as far as her funding of schools and and budgets go, she doesn't want to fund empty chairs and empty classrooms. So on the surface level, that sounds great. Abs. Absolutely. When you look at numbers, you see that we would be a declining enrollment school
004district. However, there's much more to that story and and really the needs of our students in in our school district. So, this is straight from the New York State uh school report card. It's from the 2425 school year that hasn't been completely updated yet at the state level. So, this is the only data we can pull from. As you'll see, our our sections, our grade level sections, um we're ranging anywhere from 216 students in a class grade level to 250. So, um, you know, there's some disparity, but for the most part, we're pretty even throughout our school district based on grade level. Um, going back to what I had mentioned earlier though with the declining enrollment, if you're to take 80 students, they're already accounted for within this, but if you're to to take 80
005students and spread them out throughout our school district, you're talking about a very minimal decrease in a grade level potentially. Um, so when we're talking about budget and finance and um how we're we're doing things each and every day, we still pretty much need to maintain a similar amount of classrooms, similar amount of buildings. It really doesn't change what we have to do dayto-day too much. Um, so again going back to what our governor initially is saying, I don't want to fund empty desks. I agree with her. But on the flip side, it doesn't equate to this drastic decrease in students the the way it sounds. Also important, the the needs of our students. So while we may have some declining enrollment, the needs of our students continues to increase. So um looking at this
006again, this is data that's a year plus old. um 59 English language learners, um 543 students with disabilities, and then a very high percentage of economically disadvantaged students in our district. It takes a lot of resources to support these students. So, um, while again agree with the governor as far as us not wanting to, uh, fund empty desks and in our classrooms, the needs of our students continues to rise and and that's something that's a real number that that we're struggling to keep up with based on current funding. So, as we turn to the proposed budget, as I mentioned, we're still waiting for the state to roll out their finalized budget. Um, we do use numbers that they provide us at the beginning of the budget process. So, that's really what we use to put
007our budget together. Um, we're very hopeful that things are either the the numbers that come out from the state, the final numbers are either similar or hopefully a little bit better for us. Um, but that is something that's still somewhat up in the air and we're waiting for that finalized budget. We were hearing that things didn't go so well in in uh Albany today. So, it's it's being pushed out a little bit longer, so we're still waiting a little bit. As we head into budget season each year, we do try to set some priorities as a budget team. Uh, this year was was absolutely no different. um especially as we started to uh go down the the budget road and understanding that maybe some of the funding that we were receiving wasn't quite where we
008needed it to be. Uh we we really needed to make sure our priorities were straight. So number one, we've really tried to make sure that we're maintaining our academic programs. So, we are looking at some areas that uh you know, we've had to cut back a little bit, um tighten our belts, but we're really trying to make sure that we're spreading that out quite a bit in our throughout our district and our programs. Um so, we're still able to offer our students pretty much what we've been offering. It may look a little bit different as we look at reductions, but again, really trying to give our students as many experiences as possible. Student safety always at the center of what we do. Uh really wanting to make sure that the decisions we make through the
009budget process. We're not doing anything that would lessen student safety in any way. Uh we also know that student safety along with that comes the safety of our staff and our families. Um so really making sure that we're making decisions that still maintain the that safety within our district. Extracurricular opportunities. uh we've found it was very important to try to maintain these as much as possible as well. We know especially with our older students once students get into the high school uh junior high those offerings are really what keep a lot of students coming to school and and engaged in school in our day program. So we don't we didn't want to um cut too deeply into that to eliminate any of those opportunities for our students. Then last but not least uh keeping fiscal
010responsibility in mind. So, the decisions that we make right now, obviously, those are going to continue to have an impact on our district for years to come. Um, and really want to make sure that we're making the right decisions, but then also forward thinking decisions that will hopefully put our district in a better place as we move forward with our future budgets. So, the big factor that's impacting our budget this this year for next school year, um, and Mrs. Cooper is going to get into details as far as the um number side of things is really we've had a minimal impact uh or increase in our revenue which is our foundation aid and we'll get into what that means in a second here but um in the initial runs from our governor uh we were
011looking at a 1% increase in our foundation aid which is a big driver of of how we operate the the funding that we rely on from the state. Uh if you think about your own expenses at home, the rate that things are going up typically much more than 1%. So as we're hearing from the state, we're getting a 1% increase, that really doesn't equate to a lot. Uh we have been hearing from the state, even though the the governor hasn't finalized their her budget or they haven't come to an agreement on the budget, that's likely going to increase to a 2% increase in foundation aid, which we've already factored in. Um, but again, that's not something that's really helping us as as we move forward. We we really are advocating for a change at the
012state level and how schools are funded because uh we we feel like that the current formula just is not working not only for our school district for but for many school districts across the state. >> So, I will turn things over to Mr. Cooper. >> Thank you. All right. So, I will go over some of the the numbers in the budget and try and provide a little bit of context to what they all mean and what it meant for our budget process this year. So, this slide outlines our expected revenue in and breaks down the different categories of revenue. And you can see by the the pie chart on the on the left that state aid is by far our largest source of revenue. uh 71 and a half percent as compared to anything else.
013So um when we're looking at state aid, our our overall state aid number about halfway down is just over 67.5 million. And within that, our foundation aid is the largest piece of state aid at a little over 49 million. And that's uh foundation aid is the unrestricted aid that we can use how we how we need to to uh run our programs in the district. The other types of aid that I'll show you on the next slide have um are tied to specific purposes within the budget. So, you don't have quite as much freedom with how you spend that money. Still very important. Um after state aid, our next largest source of revenue is our tax levy. So, that's the the amount that we collect locally uh from taxpayers. And at the top on the
014right, you see the 2.85% increase. That's the proposed increase to the entire levy. So that doesn't necessarily mean an individual's tax bill will increase 2.85%, but the the whole number is increasing 2.85% from last year. So that number that's proposed in 2627 is 23,796,426. And as I said, that's a 2.85% increase from what we are levying in the current year. The other sources of revenue um pilots those are our payments in lie of taxes. The miscellaneous other line encompasses a lot of of smaller sources of revenue. Um for example any rent that we collect from renting our facilities like Tibosis or um interest on investments and items like that. Um down a couple of more lines, federal aid is Medicaid reimbursements. And then finally, any use of appropriated fund balance or appropriated reserves. And people
015may remember that for the current year budget 2526, we did allocate $3.8 million in our reserves um to balance the budget. That's not something that we have the option to do moving forward. It's just it's not sustainable to use that much of your reserves year after year. We are however using a little bit um of the reserves 550,000 which much like this year we're looking at what we might have in our retirement reserves. So our teachers retirement reserve and our employee retirement reserve and then a small amount of appropriated fund balance to reach the final number of 94 and a half million. Um, one thing I will add is, you know, we're able to appropriate some fund balance because, uh, as I'm projecting to the end of the current budget, it does not appear that
016we will need to use the whole 3.8 million in reserves that we allocated. So, that's a bit of good news. The next slide breaks down the different types of state aid that we receive and foundation aid is highlighted at the top in red. And the big discussion for us this year has been that we're getting a 2% increase on our foundation aid and it it started at 1% but everything we're hearing out of Albany is that it'll it will be 2%. Again, that's our largest portion of the state aid as a whole and we rely very heavily on it. So 2% does not keep up with rising costs of just operating in general. Um the other um aid that's responsible for most of the overall increase is our building aid towards the bottom. However, that's
017one of the types of aid that is tied specifically um to something in the budget. And in this case, it's tied to our debt service. So while the aid went up, so did our debt payments. And that aid has to be applied to our debt payments. So again, you know, the the most challenging part being the revenue side and within the revenue side, the minimal increase in our foundation need a little bit more information on the tax levy itself. So the proposed tax increase, uh, as I said a couple of slides ago, is 2.85% 85% or 660,32 and that's on the overall levy over the past 10 years. You know, we always like to look back at what we've done in the past. On average, the increase has been 1.28%. Some years higher, some years
018lower, a couple years were zero. Um, this represents $2.9 million increase over 10 years that that we did increase taxes opposed to what we would have been allowed to increase, which would have been 5.5 million. So, what that tells you is we're not going to the cap every year. We're not going to the maximum increase. I think the question that comes up every year when we start to talk about the tax levy is what does this mean for the taxpayer? Um, and the answer is that right now all it can be is an estimate uh with a capital E because um there's a lot of information that goes into figuring out taxes that we don't receive until over the summer. And it they're things that we don't control either. So, it's not as simple as
019adding 2.85% to the current year's tax bill. And once again, just to reiterate, the 2.85% 85% is the amount that we're proposing to increase the overall tax levy, which the tax levy is then distributed across all of the property in the district. The way that it's distributed can depend again on many factors that are outside of the district's control, such as tax rates and equalization rates and property assessments. Um, and all of those things can also vary depending on what town or city that your home is located in. um other you know changes in assessment, changes in property values surrounding a home can also affect um the overall tax increase to a individual property. Um so again estimated impact of a 2.85% increase with various uh assessed values. So, at the $100,000 assessed value mark,
020that could mean 5250 per year increase in taxes. And again, this is using information we have now, so um it's not exact. A $200,000 home could see $127.50 increase per year and a $300,000 home could see a 20250 increase per year. Then if people like to think more on a monthto-month basis, this slide outlines what um the 2.85% increase could look like per month as you're paying. So then we went over the revenue side. We came to $94.5 million as what we can reasonably expect to receive as revenue. then you have to balance your expenditures with that revenue number. Um and you know there were some several factors that influence the revenue as we talked about earlier the 2% increase on foundation aid um our tax levy increase of 2.85% 85% and as a result
021of the minimal increase in foundation aid, we did face a gap that we needed to close in order to balance the revenue and the expenditure side of the budget. So on the expenditure side, the state requires that we present a balanced three-part budget with the three parts being program, capital, and administration of programs. Um, and you want to see the program component as the highest percentage. That's everything that has to do with uh instruction and student academic programs. Um anything student related um and I'll describe each component in more detail in the upcoming slides, but if you look at the uh percentages compared to this current year, they're uh all in line um with where they probably should be. Capital went up a little bit and that was due to an increase in our debt
022service. And again, debt service is how we repay money borrowed to complete capital improvement projects. So debt isn't a bad thing for us. It first generates aid to help offset the payments you make, but also allows that cycle to continue where we're doing capital improvement projects and improving our facilities. So the program component of the budget um as I said student programs instruction um all of the salaries for the teachers teachers assistants and aids that provide uh the instruction and the programming supplies and materials textbooks the technology department and libraries are located in this component. our special education programming, uh, school nurses and other support services, any summer programs that we offer, Bosey's academic programming, extracurricular activities, and transportation is also part of the program compl. And then this breakdown is going to mirror what
023um you see when the budget newsletter gets to you in the mail, which should be going in the mail any time now. Um, so this breaks down the categories within the program component and just show shows a comparison from the current year to the proposed budget. The next component is the capital component that is the operation and the maintenance of the facilities. So, custodial and maintenance salaries, um cleaning supplies, any type of supplies needed uh for the operation, maintenance of the plant, repairs, um the contractual expenses that are listed are just some examples that you might see uh within this component. So, snow removal being a contractual expense. So, a contractual expense means that we uh enter an agreement with another uh provider or business to help us out with a service. So snow removal
024is one that we partially contract for. We do some of our own and some is contracted. Um gas and electric falls under those expenses. Uh trash and recycling, our boiler maintenance, water and sewer. Just again some examples. Safety and security is part of this component of the budget as well as I mentioned our debt service and the comparison and the numbers. And you can see debt service as I had mentioned is responsible for the increase in is mainly responsible for the increase in this section but as a result we expect more building aid to help offset. The final component is administration of programs. Um and I think this one may be the most misunderstood component of the budget. I think you hear administration and you think all of the administrators which we are part of
025this component um our salaries and benefits are in there um but truly it's 3.8% 8% of the overall budget. So of the 94.5 million clerical salaries, uh supervision, aid salaries, uh the functions of the business office and human resources office. So for example, the business office, the expenses related to annual audits would be part of our budget as well as expenses related to tax collection. And then legal expenses and civil service are examples of items that fall within the human resource office budget. Also, um the board of education budget is in this component, including the cost of election, the election and budget vote, um numerous public notices that we need to put in the paper, and then some board training. Then, um the bullet that I think is the most impactful in this component of
026the budget are Bosey's administrative charges and central data processing fees. So Bosey's administrative charges are something that all districts within the component um districts of the Boseies pay. It's based on your enrollment and um so each year you know we pay that as part of the Boseies. And then the central data processing fees that's not so much supports Bosey's programs but um the programs that we purchase through the central New York Rick. So those are things like more centralized um tools that we use like um we use school tool that's where all of our student information is housed um parent square to communicate frontline is something that we use internally for tracking professional development and teacher evaluation. So those are all programs that we have to purchase that go into the central data processing fees
027and those two things together total over $3.2 2 million within this portion of the budget. And I think that's something that um a lot of people aren't aware of. And then the numbers for the administration of programs. Um this is just a way to break expenditures down by expense category. It's sort of a zoomed out view. Um you know you can break a budget down in a lot of different ways but um this shows some of the major expense categories and again the comparison from 2526 to the proposed 2627 budget. You can see the bottom line uh the total really shows that we're not increasing our expenses by very much. So we're just under 94.2 million for 2526 and we're proposing 94.5 million which is a typically low increase in the budget. Then just another
028way of looking at the different expenses in graph form and you know shows which expenses kind of speak for different percentages of the budget. And just to summarize and this really summarizes both the revenue and the expenditure side. The story being um we're receiving lower than expected increases in our aid, our foundation aid. Um and that required us to reduce expenses in order to balance. Uh throughout the process, we did look at things a little differently this year. Um we had a budget team who met and talked about ways that we could try to reduce expenses. So we broke the budget down into different sections and then went line by line through the budget codes and asked a lot of questions. Asked you, do we really need this much money here? Is that a place
029that we could save a little bit? And we did all of that before looking at any reductions in physicians. So through that process um we were able to reduce the gap between the revenue and expenses to just over 5 million which we have been able to balance. Um just a quick look at historically what we have seen in terms of an annual budget increase by percent and as I said this is an atypical year and it's really not due to expenses going down. It's again um expenses are increasing as you would expect but the revenue is not enough to keep up with the rising costs of operating and providing programs to our students. And additionally we don't have the ability to increase our revenue side by using reserves at least not to the same level
030that we planned for in 2526. We are still using some, but it's important to have uh also another focus on rebuilding the reserves and our fund balance that have been depleted over the last couple of years of challenging budgets because that keeps you in just overall better fiscal health by having some reserves. So again, this year we're seeing a less than 1% increase in the overall budget number. a summary of some of the things we looked at and ways to reduce uh spending to bring the budget into balance. Again, we tried to look at everything we could within the budget before getting to positions. Um really every line in all three components uh were looked at and we were able to to save um in all of these different areas before we got to the
031uh reduction in positions which is um a total of 54 positions that we're reducing. Right now around 30 will be reduced through attrition meaning retirements or resignations. That number is growing and will continue to grow through the spring as people may decide to go to a different district or make a change in some way. So that will reduce the number of actual layoffs. There still will be some, but as I said, right now about 30 will be reduced through attrition. The next few slides outline the propositions that voters will see on the ballot. Uh the first one being the budget and then what's not on there is there are three vacant board of education seats that people will vote on as well. The second proposition is a pretty long one, but I'll I'll sort of
032summarize it. So this is the purchase of student transportation vehicles and maintenance vehicles. Um, we are putting out a proposition really the proposition is to allow us to borrow the money needed to make these purchases. Um, and the purchases would be for one minibus and one minivan that we need to replace to ensure that our vehicles are safe for our students. And the two maintenance vehicles are two dump trucks. Ours are definitely at the end of their usable life and they're really essential for salting our facilities during the winter. So, it's important that we keep those uh running and in good operating and again safe condition for our employees to drive. The third proposition is the library tax proposition. There is a library tax proposition each year. It's separate from the school budget. Um but
033it is part of the budget vote and voters will also be voting on a board seat for the library. And then finally, the sale of property. This is for the sale of the Erie Street building. This was voted on and passed last year, but did not include a a monetary value. Uh we left it that way on purpose. Um our council at the time thought that that was a better way to go. It didn't specify a price and it would give us more options in um you know, looking for a buyer. So, we did find a buyer. However, now they're running into some problems because the proposition didn't have the monetary value in there. So, we're putting the proposition back out and we're including the amount of 225,000, but it's really the same idea, same
034goal of last year is that we would like to sell the Erie Street building. our remaining timeline. Um we have one board meeting between now and the budget vote uh next Tuesday, May 12th, and then the budget vote itself is May 19th. And then the following evening on May 20th, we'll ratify the budget and the election results. Just a quick look at our voting districts. Uh the breakdown is on the east side people vote at the city of Fulton community room and on the west side it's the Fulton War Memorial. And again that's on May 19th and it'll be from 9:00 a.m. to 900 p.m. And then this is pretty far away for everybody here, but um just a quick look at what a ballot might look like included for folks to see. So, um
035I mentioned that our budget newsletter should be in the mail very soon. Um there's a lot of information on the website regarding the budget. We'll make sure this presentation goes up on the website. Um our annual budget statement packet is already there. It's a very lengthy document, but the first few pages uh break down the budget much like the presentation did and um again talk about the tax levy and uh you know I guess the basics of uh what the budget looks like. So that's all on the website. um we'll make sure this presentation gets added and then certainly if there are questions um we'll take questions here but also for people watching there's a email address that you can send any budget questions to and you will get a reply from someone from Athens
036and we appreciate everybody's support we appreciate you coming and we look forward to seeing everyone on the 19th If there are any questions, >> I have a question. The 64 positions that are being eliminated or downsized, whatever, are they not needed? I mean, where are they? I mean, what's going to happen to the responsibilities that those 54 people do? Where is it going? >> Right? So, to answer the first question, they're absolutely needed. So that was one of our biggest difficulties going through >> um this process. So uh there like I mentioned earlier, we tried to spread them out as much as possible. So we were first charged with looking at our class sizes. Um are there any areas that maybe because of a declining enrollment that we might be able to capture a section
037of something that we're teaching? So that may be an area that we're reducing. Um we also looked at mandates. So what are things that are mandated versus not mandated? Um so even though it's not mandated, we still feel it's necessary, but that may be an area that we could go to. Um and then also some non-instructional positions as well. Um most difficult thing is we're trying to keep as far away from impacting our students as possible. Uh so it was very difficult process that we went through as a team. um had to change it quite a few times just to I guess get get the scope of of what we thought we could get away with. Our our concern is probably more about next year, the impact that it will end up having. I mean,
038again, you're looking at things on paper, but then the next budget cycles and and what we're facing. So, I think everyone here knows that we had to reduce quite a few positions the year before. So then the reduction this year is has a major impact on us. >> Does that impact the students or does that impact the other worker that are going to take on this work? I mean you can only put so much on a plate before it overflows so drastically that yes >> it's not effective. >> Yeah. So it's a little bit of both. Um, but again, we're trying to reduce the amount of impact it has on students, but it absolutely has impact on our employees because again, as you're saying, the work has to go somewhere, >> right? Exactly. >> So,
039that's where we're trying to keep it spread as much as possible to reduce that impact, but we know there is going to be an impact. >> Any any idea of what the impact to the students should be? I mean, how much of that has actually affected a student versus me having to do part of your job, your job, your job? because >> person's gone. >> Some of it's hard to tell until we actually have it in place. >> Um, again, as I was saying, where there were areas that we could capture because it's just declining enrollment. We just don't need potentially need a position because there's x amount of students who are no longer taking that course. That may that's an easy decision to make versus others where if we have to reduce a program,
040um, how are we going to continue to serve those students? That's where we're talk. We're going to have to work with our staff to figure out different or new models to to support them. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Questions? >> Any other questions? >> I have a comment. >> Sure. I know everybody's worked very hard on this budget and it is important to look at the students and what they need and I think you've done your best to not eliminate things that will affect students and I hope people come out like they should and vote on the budget. Work very hard on it. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Yes. We're hoping folks come out and participate as well. Yeah. Thank you. >> Yes. Thank you very much.