With 2012-’13 school budget discussions underway, the district saw fit to provide a snapshot of its perspectives as it began its calculations.
Though cost reductions continue to be formulated, the district plans to maintain consistency. For example, Board Secretary and Assistant Superintendent for Finance Larry Shanok said in many circles it’s believed that “librarians, counselors, and nurses might be luxuries in the future, but WW-P disagrees with that.” He added that art and music are not valued by all but balance of co-curriculars and athletics is something the district will strive for.
Shanok gave a starter presentation at the board meeting on Tuesday, January 24, outlining many figures and district statistics for the current year and recent past with hopes to avoid the sting of the budget defeat one year ago.
“Last year, for the first time in a dozen years and despite being a high-performing district with a per pupil cost $1,200 below state average, we saw that a defeated budget is entirely possible,” Shanok said.
Shanok’s presentation gave WW-P credit for being meticulous in taking care of its infrastructure and assets. He says there are over $200 million worth of physical assets in the district, and being cautious with them is key.
“If you looked at it optimistically and overlooked inflation, and you said that you could replace all the assets methodically over a 40-year period that would still be over $5 million a year. We don’t even dedicate that much in our annual budget, and one of the reasons we’re able to do that is spending a lot more on maintenance and repair work,” he said.
Shanok claims WW-P “benchmarks very well” with comparable high-performing districts in New Jersey, including its use of its capital reserve to support construction projects and utilizing available state funds, which contributed more than $6 million to projects from this year’s budget. Of that amount $4 million came from capital reserve while $2.5 million came from the state’s regular operating district grants, according to Shanok.
Shanok detailed the budget-to-budget increases of the past decade. “Just going back over the past five years you can find instances where the budget-to-budget increase was 4.3 percent, and in fact over a six-year period it went up 4.3 percent every year. In today’s environment and fiscal mentality that amount might seem staggering but to remember, before that period where 4.3 was the norm the lowest budget-to-budget increase in the district had been 5.5 percent and the highest was 12.2 percent,” Shanok said. In contrast, the 2011-’12 budget was 1.4 percent higher than the year before.
“There’s been a lot of progress in how the budget approaches spending, yet by squeezing costs we have moved from where in 2002-’03 we were actually above state average to where our per pupil cost is below state average, showing our ability to constrain the right costs,” Shanok said.
Shanok explained that the district’s budget proposals are not a direct step with the local tax levy.
“Each budget is a tax levy, but that is not the direct money being collected by the townships. The first part of many years the tax levy will be collected along with the second part of the previous year’s, so it gets complicated as it starts mixing in with assessed values, which was very challenging for both townships,” he said.
Board finance committee chairman Tony Fleres noted that in 2010-’11 the total tax levy rose to 6.5 percent due to the loss of $8 million in state aid that year. Fleres’ comments became sarcastic to make his point. “Tax relief may be a bad term; it is essentially money that was unspent from the prior year. We prepare a budget and anticipate what we need for the coming year. To be prudent, if you (the public) can tell us in March and April what the health insurance increase is going to be next year, or what gasoline prices will be or what the stock market is going to do, please do inform us,” Fleres said.
Fleres said in 2010-’11 WW-P held its budget to the same as the previous year. The $5.8 million classified as tax relief was money the district didn’t spend due to “reasonable choices.”
“Had we tried to get smack-on in 2010-’11 we would have not included that $5.8 million in the budget. The next year (this year) we only wound up with $3.2 million in surplus. We have to budget for surplus because we don’t operate with a line of credit,” Fleres said.
With the per student costs, Shanok’s presentation stated that WW-P has added $1,800 per student while the state average was $3,500 per pupil.
“We’ve done remarkable things but there is a cost, and the indicator to that is our student-to-teacher ratio,” he said.
According to Shanok it is not a question of whether WW-P wants to have teachers and certified staff, either directly in classrooms or in support of our students. It is a matter of spending less.
“If we move aggressively further (with financial trimming) that will undoubtedly have to move further up also, even more so with the student-administrator ratio,” he said.
The district currently has eight administrators per 217 students. In comparison Princeton has five administrators per 140 students, Hopewell has five per 156 students, Ewing has two per 161 students, and East Windsor has one per 174 students. Trenton has four per 161 students.
West Windsor-Plainsboro’s classroom costs per student are $7,793 this school year, lower than most other districts in the area with the exception of East Windsor. But Shanok said that can be deceiving.
“While other districts are spending a lot more in total, that $7,800 per student classroom cost accounts for 63 percent of our total spending,” he said.
Shanok inferred that WW-P puts its dollars into the classroom, with evidence being the administrative cost per student ($1,211) ranking second-lowest to Hamilton in the area.
Before the breakdown of facts and figures was presented, Superintendent Victoria Kniewel spoke about the evolution of education in the district and as a whole.
“We don’t have to tell you that times have changed, such as the way your dental practice or laser vision surgery has changed over the years. Classrooms very much have changed. We now have access to real-time resources. Innovation and collaboration characterize classrooms today, and of course global competition,” she said.
Kniewel presented an example of a 2006 AP US history question versus an updated version, moving away from isolated information and memory and toward reasoning through a written explanation, an approach which Kniewel pointed out allows students to come up with their own answers “as long as there is a cogent and coherent argument.”
“If I were to characterize the biggest changes we are seeing in education, particularly in this district, is the word evidence. We use the evidence that we gather when the administrators and I go into classrooms to do our instructional rounds — modeled on medical rounds — where we collect evidence. What’s the evidence that students are engaged and that they are working towards the school goals,” Kniewel says.
Kniewel notes that technology, including the Internet, is now used in the district for students to publish writing and interact with others.
“What we hear from our corporate partners and others within the community is that students need to know how to collaborate in a productive and effective way,” she says.
Through its upcoming series of budget presentations, the school board looks to do that for residents in the district.
