Katonah-Lewisboro Board of Ed warns of ‘very challenging’ years ahead during budget talks

Tough decisions need to be made.”

Bill Swertfager, Finance Committee chairman

CROSS RIVER, N.Y - Katonah-Lewisboro school officials, grappling with rising costs and shrinking revenue, can expect to face hard choices as they prepare the district's 2026-27 budget.

The economies likely mean job cuts as well as belt-tightening in every department. Early budget discussions also included talk of potentially busting the state-imposed tax cap, something KLSD has never done. 

The district scheduled an overview of budget conditions for the Jan. 15 meeting at the John Jay High School library.

Bill Swertfager, the school board's Finance Committee chairman, warned at the Dec. 18 board meeting that "the next several years . . . are expected to be very financially challenging."

"Many surrounding school districts have pierced the [tax] cap, or are discussing piercing it," he noted. So far, KLSD has "been able to avoid it, but at some point, it may become a reality in the future."

In a follow-up email interview this month, Swertfager said the district administration was "doing everything possible to stay under the cap for next year."

Still, he said, "with the reality of our contractual obligations, big increases in healthcare cost over the past number of years and state aid cuts this year, tough decisions need to be made."

The search for potential economies, he said, includes "looking at eliminating certain administrative and faculty positions, largely through attrition" and asking departments to find areas to cut in their budgets.

Nontax revenue like state aid helps pay for a small percentage of the budget. But its financial backbone remains the tax levy, and Albany has imposed controls on its growth.

The tax cap limits how much the district can increase the levy from year to year. In 2026, for the fourth consecutive year, the state capped the levy increase at 2 percent, plus some allowances for growth.

Increases in the levy above that number are permitted but label the budget as noncompliant, requiring a 60 percent vote of residents, not a simple majority, for approval.

Voters have only rejected two proposed KLSD budgets in this century, and both got thumbs up in a second balloting. But neither of them had to overcome the stigma of that noncompliance label. It does make a difference.

In 2024, Chappaqua schools presented a noncompliant budget—and saw it go down to defeat in May by a margin of almost 2-1. But cap-compliant spending, presented to voters in June, won approval.