Schenectady school budget details sought

PHOTOGRAPHER: Kathleen Moore

Interim schools Superintendent John Yagielski said the city school district’s budget is unusable in its current state, in which most expenditures are listed under one lump sum.

“[It is] not what I need to manage the district,” Yagielski said. “We need a lot more detail.”

Once the district’s new budget officers finish closing out the 2009-2010 books, they will start itemizing the budget, he said. He envisions a budget that lists expenditures for each program at each instructional level, from elementary to high school. “We want to go program by program,” he said.

New school board President Cathy Lewis enthusiastically agreed.

“I’m looking forward to it — in a big way,” she said. “We need to be able to slice and dice this more effectively … We all have many questions.”

Yagielski noted that the current budget precisely meets the state’s requirements. “But this is the minimum requirements.”

He also wants to create a chart of accounts, including textbooks and supplies, “so we can keep track of it. We can put budgets to it,” he said. “How much are we spending on textbooks on the elementary level? And in every school?”

The state, he noted, requires that the district only track total textbook costs.

Looking to trim

Reworking the budget may help the school board begin to develop a leaner 2010-2011 budget, he added. “If we start from scratch, we’re not assuming what we did in the past is what we’ll do in the future.”

Lewis was not quite as optimistic, but said a detailed budget would at least allow the board to “make more methodical and logical decisions” in what to cut.

Yagielski also said that next year the district likely won’t be able to do some of the things it does now.

In a recent interview he said he doesn’t want to cut teachers because class sizes would rise, but he isn’t sure what he will recommend eliminating. “What are those things? I don’t have the foggiest idea.” But he added that with a detailed budget, he could develop options.

“Late in the fall, I’ll have a better sense.”

At that time, he plans to ask the school board for a target tax rate and total budget amount. He also wants the board to develop a list of priorities for next year’s budget.

Since he expects to stay just one year while the district searches for a long-term superintendent, Yagielski said he does not intend to focus on reorganizing the district’s buildings. That topic came up repeatedly in this year’s school board election as a way of saving money through complete reorganization.

At issue is whether the district would be better off replacing its elementary and middle schools with a handful of large K-8 schools, which give the district a savings of scale. Parents have also broached the idea of adding a second high school to reduce congestion, improve supervision and discipline and eventually hike the graduation rate.

Longer view

Yagielski has shepherded school districts through expansions and contractions in student population, but he said the process would take much more than a year.

“In a short year’s period of time, I don’t think it would be a worthwhile thing to do,” he said, but added that evaluating the district’s enrollment projections and building capacities is a valuable long-term project.

“We’ve got to begin the process to do that,” he said. “Is that something that ought to be on the agenda of the school board? Probably.”

Lewis said it will be on her board’s agenda, although she’s not committed to any reorganization plan yet.

“I think we’re open to everything,” she said. “Part of what we want to do is look at our structure and determine if we can make changes.”

She agreed it will take far more than a year, but said the process should begin now — along with the redrawing of the budget and the year-long work to build the 2010-2011 budget.

“It’s an ambitious year.”