Katonah-Lewisboro school budget meets tax cap with 16 job cuts

CROSS RIVER, N.Y. - Katonah-Lewisboro schools will cut 16 jobs in rolling out a proposed tax-cap-compliant budget for next year of $131.8 million, the school board heard last week.

Concluding a three-meeting budget presentation that began a month ago, School Superintendent Ray Blanch told the board on March 12 that his budget also reallocates five positions, for a net loss of 11 full-time slots. District officials have said, and Blanch reiterated last week, that the hope is to accomplish position cuts, as much as possible, through attrition.

Most job losses—11 of the 16—will hit the high school and middle school. That reflects a greater influx of K-6 students than those in 9-12, flattening for now a two-decade decline in KLSD enrollment. Three of the five redistributed positions place special-education teachers in each of the district’s elementary schools.

But John Jay High School and Middle School will each lose a special-ed teacher and an assistant principals. An assistant principal for students with disabilities also faces elimination.

Other economies at the high school cut an instructional coach and counselor, nurse and architecture positions while the middle school loses teachers in social studies, science, math and English language arts.

At the district level, a physical-education teacher and an elementary instructional coach are dropped. Meadow Pond Elementary School loses a position for 3rd grade section reduction.

Other job redistributions, in addition to the three elementary-school special-ed teachers, include a coordinator of student empowerment at the high school and, in the district office, a chairperson for the Committee on Special Education.

The superintendent’s budget now goes to the school board for consideration before the public votes on May 19. Along the way, the board will make any needed adjustments, adopt the budget as its own and present it to the public at a hearing on May 7.

At $131,816,402, the budget posed a stiff challenge to KLSD’s perennial goal of tax-cap-compliant spending. Staying within the cap, said Lisa Herlihy, the assistant superintendent for business, “was not easy at all.”

KLSD encompasses the Katonah hamlet of Bedford and all of Lewisboro as well as parts of North Salem and Pound Ridge. The district levy on those communities’ real property, by far the backbone of school financing, is limited by a state-imposed levy cap of $113,558,301.

That means an increase over current levels on the revenue side of some $4 million. But three spending lines alone—benefits, special education and debt service—are expected to grow by more than $5 million.

Only about 14 percent of total spending is funded by income other than property taxes. The biggest of those sources, state aid, won’t be certain till lawmakers approve a state budget, due by April 1. For now, KLSD budget makers are projecting $11.1 million in Albany dollars. Other revenue sources—major contributors include the district’s share of county sales-tax receipts (estimated at $1.6 million) and $3.35 million from the fund balance—complete the budget’s cash flow.