CROSS RIVER, N.Y. - Finances in the Katonah-Lewisboro School District may soon be based on three-to-five-year calculations rather than today’s incremental, annual-budget approach.
While residents would continue to vote each May on the budget for a single academic year, estimates of district revenue and outlays over the far-longer period would inform that spending plan’s numbers. The long-range forecasts would look at capital expenditures as well as day-to-day operational spending.
“One of our priorities is to move beyond looking at budgets one year at a time,” Lisa Herlihy, KLSD’s assistant superintendent for business, told the Sept. 17 school board meeting.
The board also heard a review of the Oct. 20 revote on borrowing to create an early childhood center at the former Lewisboro Elementary School (see below).
Taking the longer view of district finances, Herlihy said, would install “a formal process of analyzing where our revenues and expenditures are going as well as having a public-facing document that shows that long-range plan.”
Herlihy said the district’s five-year capital plan will be based on the results of a Building Condition Survey presented last spring. That latest BCS—the state requires one every five years—turned up $128 million in recommended repairs and upgrades at the five KLSD schools, none of them deemed critical, demanding immediate corrective action.
The school board’s Finance Committee chair, Bill Swertfager, said his panel will use the BCS, conducted by H2M architects + engineers (Melville, N.Y.), to “prioritize what needs to be done.” The committee hopes to finish work on the five-year capital plan by January, he said.
“These tools,” Herlihy said, “will provide the board with a stronger framework for making informed, sustainable financial decisions that support the district's priorities.”
She spoke as trustees were taking up the KLSD Empowerment Plan 2026/2027, which Barbara Williams, the school board president, called “incredibly ambitious.”
“It really speaks to the spirit of the school district of really wanting to continue to achieve,” she said of the declaration. In four pages, it outlines the rungs KLSD will build into its students’ education ladder, including pledges to facilitate the quest for knowledge and foster inclusion.
“Oftentimes, organizations will sort of create the plan, but then the work of every day gets in the way and the plan gathers dust,” Williams said. “I think what we're [seeing] here is evidence of really wanting to live up to that plan and really wanting to take concrete steps.”
She said that “behind each of these bullets, there's a tremendous amount of work and a tremendous amount of people that it takes to make these things happen.”
Among the bullet points and cited as “evidence of empowerment,” are the multiyear budgeting forecast and five-year capital plan.
Herlihy said the goal was “to give the board a clearer picture of where our revenues and expenditures are headed over the next several years.”
“These tools will provide the board with a stronger framework for making informed, sustainable financial decisions that support the district's priorities,” Herlihy said.
UNIVERSAL PRE-K BOND VOTE
KLSD’s proposed $19.95 million makeover of Lewisboro Elementary School as a center for early childhood learning will have its final information sessions in coming days.
The borrowing needed to create both the state-mandated universal prekindergarten facilities and other accommodations at LES face an Oct. 20 vote. So, school officials have been mounting an extensive campaign to sell their plan, a revised one, to district residents.
Details of the new bond proposal, including how the district cut its spending by some 18 percent, are available online. Two public information sessions remain: over Zoom at 7 p.m. on Monday (Oct. 5) and at the school board’s meeting on Thursday (Oct. 8).
A $24.5 million LES plan was narrowly rejected by voters in May—shortly before lawmakers declared pre-K services the right of every 4-year-old in the state, starting in 2028.
The new bond’s $19.95 million would go, among other things, to building at least eight classrooms meeting the State Education Department’s specialized standards for prekindergarten facilities. Private childhood educators, under contract with KLSD, are expected to provide the pre-K services for 4-year-olds as well as preschool programming for younger children. The former LES gym would become a standalone facility for community use.
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