It’s budget season at WVCS

It’s budget time again at West Valley Central School. During the board meeting held Feb. 6, District Treasurer Michael Chudy gave part one of the budget presentation.

This year’s total central administration budget section rose from the 2011/12 projected amount of $137,755 to $141,523, but Chudy reminded the board that, with the hiring of Principal Daniel Amodeo, funds needed to be moved around to accommodate that additional salary.

The total board of education budget for next year is $14,131, up slightly from the 2011/12 projected $12,311. Total finance costs are budgeted at $152,356, in comparison to last year’s projected $160,945. WVCS switched banking providers, from M&T Bank to Chase Bank, and Chudy said the new provider picked up some of the district’s tax collection duties.

The total staff budget for 2012/13 is $81,554 (including school attorney, personnel and public information BOCES services), down from 2011/12’s projected $82,094. Chudy pointed out that the newsletter editor funding went from $8,000 in 2010/11 to zero this year, because the school no longer does its newsletter in-house. Conversely, BOCES’ public information budget line went up slightly, because the school’s newsletter is now printed by a BOCES service. “Just remember that 76 percent of that is aidable the next year, so we’re only paying 23 percent of it the following year,” Chudy said.

Total central services are set at $780,566, in comparison to the 2011/12 projected $672,842. “Each year, we try to look at equipment that really needs to be replaced and stay on top of that,” Chudy said, regarding the maintenance and operations categories in central services.

Announcing that the school is “fortunate that premiums have increased very little,” Chudy said that the school’s general support, including unallocated insurance, went up only slightly more than 2.5 percent, now budgeted at $1,336,328. The school’s BOCES administration budget went down from $105,077 last year to $98,479 in 2012/13. “The capital on that is allocated based on the daily attendance of schools,” Chudy said, citing WVCS’s dropping enrollment as the cause for the reduction in cost.

The second part of the budget, “instructional,” will be presented at the Feb. 27 meeting at 7 p.m. with the third edition, “transportation and benefits,” discussed on March 12 at 7.

In other board news:

- School Superintendent Hillary Bowen and Board Member Michael Frascella recently attended a presentation led by Rick Timbs, executive director of the Statewide School Finance Consortium. Encouraging the audience to visit www.statewideonline.org, Frascella said that Timbs’ presentation was “impressive,” and highlighted the disproportional funding available to rural school districts. “It was very educational for me,” he said. “The public should be educated on how difficult it is for small districts like ours to make our budgets.”

- Dovetailing off of Frascella’s comments, Bowen said that, though funds allocated to school districts in New York state “may have been fairly distributed, they were disproportionate. It’s a challenge to put together a budget that is sufficient for everybody.”

- Bowen announced that, on Feb. 2, New York state passed the “Open Meetings Law,” which instructs school boards to make any information brought to the board available to the public. She said that this practice has already been enacted at WVCS.

- Amodeo recognized the students who qualified for All County band. Fifth grade: Mike Boberg, Rachel Frascella, Andrea Kaiser and Winter Mumbach. Sixth grade: Josh Howe, Lauren Olejniczak, Erika Seltzer and Sarah Sheffield. Eighth grade: Madison Czapla, Kelsey Lee Evens and Matt Proctor. Ninth grade: Sam D’Angello, Patrick Enser, Brittney Noto, Jordan Seltzer, Amber Thiel and Austin Wierzba. Amodeo said that the number of students who tried out this year was the highest ever sent by WVCS. The average score per student was 92.5.

- The following coaches were approved for the 2012 spring sports season: Aron Cole, head girls varsity softball; Diana Frank, modified girls softball; Bryan Hansen, head boys varsity baseball; Patricia Waldron, head girls and boys varsity track and Kristopher Fuller, girls and boys varsity track assistant.

- Justine Stephan was approved as a tutor for the remainder of the 2011/12 school year.

The next WVCS Board meeting will be held on Feb. 27 at 7 p.m.