Tonight (2019-04-02) was a budget workshop of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
The topic of the meeting was the ~$500k gap between expected income and desired expenses. I’ve been coming to these long enough that I knew there would be a plan to close that gap, and I was not disappointed.
In fact, the majority of the discussion was about the details of that plan. The staff had found enough potential cuts to bring before the Board that there was room to add back a little bit. Which is a credit to Gene (Superintendent) and his team, he provided the Board a decent amount of options to sort through.
In the end, the Board decided, of the proposed items to cut, the drug/alcohol counseling support was the most important to keep. Of the rest, it felt to me mostly like taking advantage of retirements and logical phase outs. I’m sure a more detailed list will be available before too long, most likely in time for next weeks meeting.
While I won’t begrudge the Board their discussion, I did feel that some of this budget and program impact should have come up during the PBAC meetings. I understand why it doesn’t, but I also think the school should have a running plan for prioritized cuts for a third of the budget. Or in other words, be ready to continue if the state decided to remove their ‘aid’ entirely.
Instead I hear a sense that the district is owed more from the state then they get. Eh, it’s an imperfect world, and we all have our flaws.
It was interesting to hear how seniority would impact some of the staff shuffling. I understand that’s just how it is in a ‘union shop‘. Which is a shame, you’d think we wanted the ‘best’ possible staff, not necessarily those with the most years worked. I would expect a significant degree of overlap, but not completely. And given the choice of ‘better’ staff or ‘older’ staff, I know which I’d want for my (hypothetical) children.
In part of the discussion it came up that 6th grade LOTE (Spanish/French) was not required by the state. But more interesting, band was also not required. Not that I’m saying band should be cut, but that the dollar amount of doing so should be known. If only to better put things in perspective. I would expect there to be considerable justification for the cost, but if the dollar value isn’t known, how to you even attempt to compare programs for the budget?
I did like how the tables where arranged. The tables the Board sat at were pushed closer together then usual. While I wasn’t at the table, I would expect it to give it a closer, more intimate feel for the discussion. Probably a good idea under the situation.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the April 02, 2019 budget workshop of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education.
As has become the norm for this group, Agenda’s and similar information can be found at HFL’s BoardDocs page.