OK, Mr. Superintendent, what do you actually do?

A lot of people ask me, “OK, Mr. Superintendent, what do you actually do?” The simple answer is that I oversee the running of the entire district from top to bottom.

The more complicated answer is that I hold myself personally responsible for helping our district reach two main goals each school year: increasing academic achievement and managing the costs of providing a quality education to our students — costs that are largely funded by our community’s taxpayers.

I am going to focus on my second goal in this post, since the school budget vote is just around the corner.

The Watervliet Board of Education recently adopted a $21,299,784 proposed budget for the 2008-09 school year. The plan represents a 9 percent increase in spending over the current year’s budget and would result in an estimated 1.5 percent tax rate increase if approved by voters on May 20.

The spending increase is higher than some area districts, due to about $1 million in increased state aid we will receive. Under the New York’s Contract for Excellence (C4E) program, we are required to spend these state revenues in very specific ways as prescribed by the state.

C4E provides an infusion of money to help us support our most important goal as a district: improving student achievement. Programs funded by this money will benefit our students with the greatest educational needs, and serve to strengthen our academic program district wide. To learn more about C4E and what it means for Watervliet, please see the resources listed at the end of this post.

Again, we can only use C4E funds for school improvement initiatives — and the state picks up the tab! That also means that these funds cannot be used to reduce local school taxes. However, we have sought other ways to reduce the impact of the proposed budget on our local taxpayers. Translated into real dollars, the proposed 1.5 percent tax rate increase would mean a tax increase of approximately $28 for the average homeowner in Watervliet and $31 for Mannsville homeowners. Keep in mind: these figures are based on a home assessed at $100,000. Your number may be different depending on your property assessment.

The Empire Center for New York State Policy recently came out with their “2008-09 School Budget Spotlight,” which focuses on proposed tax and spending changes measured on a per-pupil basis for the 634 school districts that have submitted data compiled for the State Education Department’s annual school property tax report cards. The state average in “per-pupil tax levy change” is 4.2 percent. Our “per-pupil tax levy change” is -2.2 percent. Our budget proposal ranks 16^th lowest in the state, meaning that out of the 634 districts that submitted information to State Ed, 618 of them have a larger increase in what their proposed budget will cost taxpayers per student.

I am pleased that the budget proposal includes no cuts to staff or programs and, in fact, adds many new initiatives. Our administrative team has worked very hard to develop a budget that really targets our resources to the students and the areas where we need the most improvement and continues our forward momentum in reading and literacy districtwide. We are also focusing on making improvements to our mathematics curriculum and our special education services.

I hope you will all learn as much about this year's proposed budget as you can before the vote on May 20. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

For more information:

Budget hearing: May 13, 7 pm, Watervliet Jr./ Sr. HS Auditorium

Budget section of watervlietcityschools.org

Contract for Excellence public hearing: May 27, 7 pm, Watervliet Jr./ Sr. HS Media Center

C4E section of watervlietcityschools.org