The Roslyn Board of Education presented its latest draft of the 2024-2025 budget Thursday night, which included a tax levy that is down from the previous draft budget.
Board members also discussed the fluctuation in student enrollment and disappointing state aid.
“We still maintain our commitment to growth and sustainability while making those refinements in the budget and ensure financial stability,” said Superintendent Allison Brown. “But I also want to note that being financially responsible…doesn’t mean going lower all the time. Then it becomes irresponsible.”
The proposed 2024-2025 budget is $132,594,170. This number represents a 4.02% budget-to-budget increase of $5,119,365 from the approved 2023-2024 budget. The approved year-to-year increase from 2022-2023 to 2023-2024 was 4.36%, according to Brown.
The proposed 2024-2025 tax levy is 2.85%. The district has a tax levy limit of 3.07%.
The proposed tax levy decreased from the previous draft budget, when board members proposed a tax levy of 3% Feb. 15.
“The levy for ’24-’25 is only up a fraction of the percent, 0.28%, from the previous fiscal year…with the additional enrollment, with the cost of our insurance going up, our utilities going up, our programs going up, our software going up.”,” said Brown.
She discussed student enrollment and its impact on the budget at length. Currently, 3,317 students are enrolled in the district in the school buildings. This number does not include out-of-district students.
The district has seen an increase in enrollment over the past 10 years. In the 2013-2014 school year, 3,150 students were enrolled in the district. And current enrollment is higher than just last year’s number, when 3,277 students were enrolled.
In February alone, the district saw nine new student arrive. And so far in the 2023-2024 year, the district has welcomed 176 new students.
These numbers do not factor in students who left the district during these times, which might help balance out the numbers.
“We also know that over these 10 years, we only have gained significant amounts of students,” said Brown. “We’ve never lost them.”
As an example, Brown said a cohort of kindergarteners in 2013-2014 had 203 students. As of Thursday, that cohort is in 10th grade and has 273 students.
The superintendent said the board takes care to keep classes within class size guidelines. As a result, grades 1 and 3 at Harbor Hill Elementary School will receive an additional section next year.
The guidelines for grade 1 at Harbor Hill are between 18 to 22 students. Grade 1 currently has five sections with class sizes of 21 to 22, according to Brown.
The guidelines for grade 3 at Harbor Hill are between 19 to 23 students. Grade 3 currently has six sections with class sizes of 22 to 23, according to Brown.
These sections will be split and budgeting will account for two additional FTE, or full-time- equivalent teacher. A full-time equivalent is not necessarily one full-time employee, but it may be additional parts of positions from multiple employees that make up the equivalency of a full-time employee, said Brown.
The draft budget also includes funding for a K-12 student support coordinator, who will support at-risk students, such as those who are failing academically or noticeably disengaged.
The district already has a student support coordinator, but the current coordinator is a contracted position from a consultant. It is more cost-effective for the district to hire someone than to pay the consultant, said Brown.
Board members continued to lament the changes in state aid under Gov. Kathy Hochul’s 2025 budget proposal.
Under Hochul’s proposal, a majority of North Shore schools are proposed to receive an increase in state aid. But school districts have called the governor’s proposed school aid increase misleading, with districts seeing drops in their foundation aid for the first time and funds allocated to them that they are unable to use.
“Albany better decide that education in this state is a priority,” said Meryl Waxman Ben-Levy, president of the Roslyn Board of Education.
The Roslyn school district is set to receive $12,455,214 in state aid in 2024-2025. Board members previously stated that some of this aid must be passed through to pre-schools, which they say ends up costing the district money, and that Hochul’s state aid plan does not properly consider inflation.