The board of education meeting Feb. 17 continued down the path taken at the Feb. 3 board meeting, and Richard McMahon, principal of the middle school, much as the two elementary principals had done before him, presented the numbers as they appear in the sixth budget draft. The budget for Draft Six is $69,815,902, a 7.2 percent budget-to-budget increase from last year. Dr. Austin Gavin, interim assistant superintendent of business, again stressed the budget was a work in progress.

Additionally, Dr. Gavin said when he came aboard about two months ago he realized the community wanted site-based budgeting, and that is being provided-up to a point. The direct costs per pupil do not include certain undistributed costs, many of which Dr. Gavin said are difficult and time consuming to flesh out. For example, he said, the debt service on the bond issue is about $2 million, the bill is just one bill, so how do you apportion it to each school? It can ultimately be figured out, but that is too time consuming for this budget, he said. Also, BOCES costs are $2.6 million so how much is assigned to Munsey Park or the middle school? Other costs not in the direct costs are salaries of the superintendent, assistants, the clerical staff in the business office, telephone, utilities, heating and so on, all of which could be sprinkled over all the schools, he explained. Dr. Gavin said at least the community can see the differences in costs among the schools, and realize that there is not enough time this year to capture every aspect of those costs the first time around.

For the school year 2004-2005 grade seven had a total projected enrollment of 233 and in 2005-2006 grade seven has a total projected enrollment of 249 students. Grade eight had 204 students projected in 2004-2005 and 234 students projected in 2005-2006. It was said that demographer Lloyd Bishop's numbers were accurate.

A summary of the costs at the middle school 2004-05/ 2005-06 with the variances is: Salaries, $3,871,000/4,022,000 up 3.9 percent; Benefits, 1,315,000/1,540,000 up 17.1 percent; Co-curricular and athletics compensation 251,000/251,000. Equipment, 0/5,300: Other expenses, 206,000/ 190,250 down 7.6 percent; Supplies, $92,950/89,100 down 4.2 percent; Total direct costs, $6,886,950/7,204,250 up 4.6 percent. Total students in 2004/2005 was 437 and in 2005/2006 is 483 which is an increase of 46 students, or an increase of 10.5 percent. The direct cost per pupil last year was $15,760 and this year is $14,916, a decrease of 5.3 percent.

Last year at the middle school there was a total of 44.65 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) teachers and this year 45.25 FTEs are budgeted, an increase of .60.

Other staffing: FTEs at the middle school last year was 23.04 and this year will be 20.71, a decrease of 2.33. The respective salaries for other staffing were $1,140,000 last year and $1,105,000 this year, a decrease of 3.1 percent.

For a copy of the presentation in far greater detail call Brenda Damiani in Community Services at 267-7750.