West Windsor-Plainsboro school officials are once again projecting a 4.3 percent increase in the 2008-09 school budget, which includes funding for two new teachers and a guidance counselor at the high school level to meet the demands as High School North approaches its full build-out.##M:[more]##
“We are trying to target a 4.3 percent increase, which is kind of exactly on the target on what we averaged over the previous five years,” said Assistant Superintendent for Finance Larry Shanok, during the school board’s February 12 meeting. “That will be six years where, in effect, we’ve had a little variation.”
Discussions on the 2008-09 budget began in January and continued during the February 12 meeting, where enrollment levels and the number of teachers at the middle and high school levels, the district’s special education programs, and athletic and co-curricular activities at the high and middle school levels were addressed. Discussions will continue Tuesday, February 26, at 7:30 p.m. at Grover Middle School, when the board will vote on sending a provisional tentative budget to the county, as required by law. The deadline for the board to do so is March 6.
Shanok reiterated, though, that the budget sent to the county by March 6 is not final. “The final one comes when the board approves it after the public hearing on March 25,” he said.
Both high school principals, as well as Susan DiDonato, the district supervisor of special services, and Marty Flynn, the athletics director, were in attendance at the meeting to answer any of the board’s questions regarding their programs as they relate to the budget.
Preliminary budget projections include increases in regular instruction, which is projected to rise to $49.2 million, up from the $46.6 million set aside in the current budget. The addition of some teachers to the payroll, combined with the expectation that cost of salaries will be increasing is what is causing the estimated increase, Shanok said.
“It’s an interesting year in that we are negotiations all five of our associations,” Shanok said. “It’s also an interesting year, as we discussed in fair amount of detail last time, there’s been a fair amount of legislative impact. One of the continuing things in our district-wide concerns is growing enrollment.”
He said that at the elementary school level, district officials are expecting to make small adjustments as needed to handle the variations of the number of students in different grades and schools. There is also a little bit of growth at the middle school, where the district expects to add in a full-time equivalent staff member. Still, he said, most of the interesting activity is at the high school level because High School North is coming toward its full build-out.
Assistant Superintendent of Pupil Services and Planning Thomas Smith explained that “when it’s done, there really may be 50 students or less separating the two high schools.” He pointed to two separate projections by the high school principals at each school compared with the board committee’s projections. At High School North, Principal Mike Zapicchi projected that he will have about 1,”568 students next year, up from the October, 2007 enrollment of 1,”472. The committee’s projections are not far off at 1,”595 for next year.
At High School South, the Principal Charles Rudnick’s projections show an enrollment of 1,”618 for 2008-09, down from the 1,”624 this year. The committee’s projections are even closer, at 1,”609 for the upcoming school year. “We’re reaching the point where the two high schools will be basically the same size, and it’s pretty interesting,” Smith said.
Because of that, the district is projecting it will need to hire three full-time equivalents between the two high schools, with a majority of those positions heading to High School North. One of those positions will include a new guidance counselor, Zapicchi said. The other two full-time equivalents will head wherever there is the demand, he said.
Board member Stan Katz questioned whether some students would be reassigned from their current guidance counselors, taking them away from already-established relationships during a critical time when they are looking at colleges. Zapicchi said the district tries to keep seniors with the same counselors they’ve had. And when students are reassigned, “we try to give as many opportunities during the summer for the parents and kids to come in and meet with the new counselor, so they can start to establish those linkages as quickly as possible.”
Funding for special services is also expected to increase from $21.2 million to $21.9 million, Shanok projected. “Because we have brought more things in house, we’ll see the instructional portion of special services and things like the number of instructional assistants to serve that part of our community will be increasing,” Shanok told the board. “That increase is being softened by a decline in tuition levels in special services.”
Officials discussed various program expansions in previous years, the most recent of which was the integrated preschool program. Some district goals as they look at the budget include expanding their services to autistic students, as New Jersey has the highest percentage of autistic students in the country, and keeping up with changes in state Department of Education codes relating to special services.
Katz asked whether the increasing enrollment was going to soon create a classroom blockage for further expansion of special education programs. Smith said the district has about five additional programs it would like to start if it had “all the room in the world,” but that officials know that isn’t the case. DiDonato said special services officials look throughout the schools and continuously plan with principals about availability of classrooms.
“Are there any specific programs, for example, that may have to be moved from one school to another?” Katz asked. “Are there programs that are in trouble? Are there programs that are naturally reduced? Are there ones that are increasing too fast?”
“Problems? No. Expansion? No,” Smith said. “We’re very cautious about expansion because of the enrollment. Right now, we’re not making any long-term plans until we see how enrollment plays out, until we know where we stand. Then we’ll make decisions.”
In other areas of the budget, about a $500,”000 increase is expected for buildings and grounds in the 2008-09 budget, Shanok said, because of the risings costs of energy, materials, and supplies, as well as transportation costs. Administrative costs, while they are projected to increase from $10.4 to $10.8 million, are mostly due to legal costs, and not more administrators, Shanok added.
The board’s non-operating budget, Shanok said, is expected to remain “pretty stable,” with debt service costing $10.3 million, down from the $11 million it cost at the time of the referendum.
The money set aside in the budget for co-curricular activities will only be increasing by less than $100,”000, from $2.4 million to about $2.48 million, Shanok said.
Numbers showed that currently, there are 400 students in each school in each season that participate in the sports program. There are 29 sports offered at the high school level. The state has championships in 32 sports. The only sports missing in WW-P schools are skiing, bowling, and gymnastics, Flynn said.
In the 2006-07 school year, the district spent $1,”240,”752 on high school sports, and $344,”758 on the 14 programs at the middle school level. For other co-curricular activities, including clubs, $473,”624 was spent at the high school level, and $306,”252 was spent at the middle school level.
Zapicchi said that when High School North first opened, there was a lot of concern that the athletic programs would be watered down. But, with the school coming up on its seventh graduating class, there have been a slew of accomplishments at both schools — including a football team that went to the state championships, a champion cross country runner at South. “There hasn’t been that drop off; it just hasn’t happened,” Zapicchi said. “The programs are really on a top level.”
Board member Randall Tucker asked whether the projected increase in enrollment at High School North would place it in the same NJSIAA group classification as High School South, and Flynn said that it may or may not, depending on various factors, not just the number of students, as the state tries to get equal numbers of teams in each group across the state.
Katz asked whether there would be any increase in the amount of assistant coaching staff at any of the schools. “Are there still places where we need to increase the assistant coaches or are we stable at this point?”
Flynn said there would be no additional coaches, even though he did have a “wish list” and that over the years, the athletics department has been prioritizing. There are some areas that need to be addressed, he said.
“There have been various things discussed, but no decisions made,” Shanok said in response to Katz’s question.
This year’s budget is the last in which school taxes will be based on property values. Next year, tax rates for Plainsboro and West Windsor will be based on the amount of students each sends to the school district. A tentative public hearing on the budget has been set for Tuesday, March 25, at which time the board will vote whether or not to approve the budget. School board elections, during which the public will vote on the budget, are on Tuesday, April 15.
