By Roy Dollard
When we on the school board first talked about aiming for a zero-increase budget for next year, we had few illusions about what that would take. A flat budget would require a $4.4 million reduction in projected expenditures and everyone understood a reduction of this magnitude would require teacher layoffs.
With salaries and benefits making up nearly 80 percent of our operating budget, there is no way to get significant savings from other areas of the operation. You can’t get it from areas like transportation, maintenance or administration, which account for 5 percent, 8 percent and 3 percent of our budget, respectively.
While we didn’t reach our goal of a flat budget, we have come very close. The tentative budget adopted on March 16 holds spending virtually flat — it would rise just 0.3 percent — and requires the lowest increase in the tax levy in more than 23 years, 1.4 percent.
This is a considerable accomplishment when you consider just how much our fixed expenses are rising. The largest is previously negotiated salaries, which will climb next year at an average rate of 4.5 percent. State-mandated programs won’t stay flat, nor will transportation costs.
So how close to the proverbial bone did we get in developing next year’s budget?
We went right up to the classroom — and stopped. We did cut some staff: four teachers, due to declining enrollments, and 4.3 paraprofessionals, all having clerical assignments. We chose not to fill a vacant campus safety officer position. Principals and department heads are taking a 15 percent across-the-board cut in their operating budgets.
We pressed for — and got — better rates on our health insurance premiums for next year. As for energy, another big line item, we are cautiously optimistic that our promising new energy-efficient systems will continue to lower our consumption and costs. So far this year, usage is down in all buildings except Bear Tavern where we have unique challenges.
We have postponed all capital projects for a year and have taken the district’s rainy-day fund for capital needs down to just over $500,000. We operate seven large buildings, three of which date to the 1920s so, in a way, we are keeping our fingers crossed.
Early on, the administration responded in kind. Superintendent Tom Butler put a freeze on all spending in December, halfway through the current school year, permitting only the most necessary expenses to be paid. All out-of-state travel for staff professional development was curtailed. These measures squeezed an extra $1 million out of the current year’s budget that we were able to put toward next year.
The next cuts would have required staff layoffs, which would raise class sizes and potentially reduce the number of elective classes at the high school. These are things we hold dear in our community, features that help distinguish us as a high performance district. Instead, we chose cuts that hit our supply closets, rely increasingly on energy-efficient systems in our buildings and lean more on our professional staff and less on outside consultants.
This is not a glamorous budget. There are no new programs, no new services, no new staff. But it is a budget that preserves and protects this very important investment in our communities: our high-quality schools.
After spending 40 years in business and developing dozens of multi-million dollar budgets, can I say that our district budget for next year cannot be cut further? Of course not. But cutting it further would mean teacher reductions. Cutting teachers means higher class sizes. And that would likely send us in a direction I and my colleagues do not wish to go.
Roy Dollard is a member of the Finance and Facilities Committee, Hopewell Valley Regional Board of Education.

