OV board grapples with budget
Toolbox
By Cristina Kumka STAFF WRITER - Published: December 30, 2009
The Otter Valley Union High School Board will look to make deeper cuts to its proposed $10.8 million school budget today after at least one school staffer opted to retire and a school leadership change is possibly on the horizon.
At a Dec. 16 public budget forum, School Board members told a sparse crowd of parents that they were looking to reduce next year's budget by more than four full-time staff members and about $73,000 in student programs and academic departments, for a total of about $340,000 in cuts to make the education property tax rate the same as this year.
One social studies teacher would be eliminated, resulting in five classes increasing in size — American Heritage 2 and Behavioral Science doubling from 12 to 24 students, according to a draft report of the reductions.
A guidance counselor, a math teacher, a science teacher and partial business and administrative positions would also be terminated, resulting in increased class sizes for students, increased caseloads for guidance counselors and reduced contractual workdays for some administrators, according to the draft.
The high school's finance and personnel committees are expected to present more changes that will affect the budget at 5:30 p.m. today at the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union's Central Office at 49 Court Drive in Brandon.
Those changes include the retirement of one full-time staffer and the staffer's possible non-replacement that may affect a student program.
The board will also consider an administrative change, OVUHS Principal Dana Cole-Levesque said late Tuesday.
"We'll have a revised proposed budget by tomorrow night," Cole-Levesque said Tuesday.
According to Ellen Kurrelmeyer, the board's Finance Committee chair, the last two school budget cycles have been particularly daunting — the board is faced with appeasing taxpayers, many of whom have lost local jobs, while maintaining academic services in a district with some failing schools.
"We have continued to reduce our personnel and operating costs so that our per-pupil costs and the OV property tax rate would remain stable," Kurrelmeyer wrote in a press release issued earlier this month.
Throughout the past three years, the school has cut the equivalent of more than 16 full-time positions and about $160,000 in departments and programs, according to Kurrelmeyer.
And because of 50 fewer students and the increase in the base tax rate proposed by the state for fiscal year 2010, cuts are not expected to stop.
In October, the board planned to make about $350,000, or about 4 percent, in cuts at the school to create the same tax rate for the 2010 tax year.
By December, however, the state informed the board that the school's equalized student count dropped by more than 7 percent, and a 9.6 percent reduction would be needed.
Cuts would have to go from $350,000 to about $1.07 million to reach the same tax rate.
At the forum, the board said it needed to hear from voters because they are now left with a 5.6 percent budget increase, or an average $180 tax hike for a taxpayer with a $200,000 home.
cristina.kumka@rutlandherald.com
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