CROSS RIVER, N.Y. - Next year’s Katonah-Lewisboro School District budget can likely come in tax-cap-compliant, district officials predict, but achieving that goal will be tougher than in past years.
Much can change in the weeks ahead as KLSD fiscal planners complete their draft of a 2024-25 spending plan. Still, Superintendent Andrew Selesnick told the trustees at their Jan. 11 meeting, “We’re cautiously optimistic that we can bring you a budget in February that will be within the cap.”
Such a budget, officials said, could hike spending by as much as $3.5 million over the current budget’s $120 million.
In a session postponed from December, the superintendent and the district’s interim business chief, Lisa Herlihy, briefed the school board on what Selesnick called “conditions that exist around us in the world that are going to influence our formation of the budget.”
Budget calculations have focused on priorities set by the school board.
Addressing the trustees, Selesnick said, “We’re going to ask you in the end, ‘Do you think your goal is still the right goal [and] do you want to adjust it in anyway in light of what you heard?’”
In a slide accompanying the presentation, Selesnick said the board’s goal was to “adopt a budget that is responsive to demographic trends and financial conditions, does not exceed the tax cap, and ensures excellence in academic and extracurricular programming.”
Several factors impact budget making, including anticipated revenue and expenses, enrollment and—key to cap compliance—the likely headroom available for added spending, if only to keep pace with what Herlihy described as inescapable increases in the cost of meeting students’ educational needs.
To achieve the board’s stated goal of a tax-cap-compliant spending plan, Herlihy said, “We foresee that we’ll be capped at approximately a $3.5 million budget-to-budget increase.”
Property taxes—always the KLSD budget’s principal revenue source—would likely shoulder a greater share of school financing next year to offset expected declines in other income streams. State aid, for example, is expected to be lower next year than last. When all state lawmakers and the governor were up for re-election in 2023, school aid was the largest it had been in years.
With other revenue streams, at least for now, deemed essentially flat, preliminary calculations have penciled-in a 3.4 percent increase in the property levy, to $106 million (compared with a 1.56 percent rise to $102.5 million last year).
“These are estimated numbers,” Herlihy said of the early budget making math, “based on the information that’s available.”
Indeed, both officials took pains in addressing the board to emphasize the likelihood of figures changing before the board sees a draft budget next month.
“When we present in February,” Herlihy said, “we’ll have more-refined numbers and more trends to look at.”
Selesnick emphasized, “This is not a budget presentation. . . . That will begin on Feb. 22.”
Filling the role of assistant superintendent for business, vacant since last year’s resignation of Danelle Pacella, Herlihy is getting a first-hand look at the myriad problems built into perhaps the job’s most formidable test.
“One of the principal challenges we encounter,” she noted, “is the unavoidable increase in operational cost. The rising price of goods and services, coupled with inflationary pressures, impact every aspect of our daily operation.”
Premiums paid for health insurance, for example, are expected to jump 12 percent this year, with rates for 2025 still unknown. Herlihy called the “continued increase in health insurance one of the major pressure points of the budget.”
Snow day makeup
Last month’s snowy one-day intrusion into the KLSD calendar will be made up in March by shortening what had shaped up as an extended spring break. March 28, originally seen as an early start for a break running through April 8, now becomes a school day instead.
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