HVN Candidate Question

The Editor of the Hopewell Valley News, Ruth Luse, has asked each of the candidates to submit a photo, short bio, and an answer to the following question: How would you trim 5% from the current (2006-2007) school budget? Be specific.

I think it is a great question, because it causes candidates to "put their money where their mouth is" and identify what areas they feel can be cut, and which areas shouldn't be cut - our answers will speak volumes about our priorities, as well as provide a mechanism into our problem solving approach.

I spent a few hours looking at the budget yesterday after I got the request from Ms. Luse, and I can tell you this - I am glad I never asserted that our current school board was wasting money.

When you talk about reducing something by 5% it seems trivial - if you are discussing your personal budget, a few simple cuts can make that up without any serious implications, but when you are talking about an already tight school budget, a 5% cut is huge.

Five percent of the current school budget comes out to between $3 and $3.5 Million dollars, which is huge - our entire transportation budget is just over $4 Million dollars, so to think that by cutting a few bus runs you can save some money is folly - you'd have to cut nearly all busing to save the 5%, but you'd run afoul of state requirements and be guaranteed a lawsuit by angry residents (or even the state). What about cutting athletics? Well, the entire athletic budget is just about $750 Thousand dollars, leaving you looking for another $2+ Million dollars to cut, and again, angering nearly all middle and high school parents. What about teachers - what if we put off hiring a few new teachers, and let class sizes grow a small amount - that could work, but then you have the challenge of keeping all classes within state class size requirements and you're still looking for additional monies to cut (only a handful of new teachers were hired last year), and to save over $3 Million dollars, you'd have to cut around 50 teachers. Finally, what if you were to skip the capital investments made this year to maintain our physical plant - well, you could do that as well, but there was only about $1 Million dollars worth of such investments, leaving you still looking for another $2+ Million dollars to cut, and you run the risk of requiring greater capital investments in the near-term when what could have been simple repairs escalate into problems that require complete replacement of failed items (i.e. a new roof versus a repaired roof).

So tell me what you think could be cut to trim 5% off the cu rent school budget - I'm interested in your thoughts as to where monies could be trimmed.