• July 12, 2024

    Dear Parents, Students, Faculty, Staff, and Community Members,

    I hope your summer is going well.  Things are busy at school as administrators, counselors, business office staff, clerical workers, custodians/facility/maintenance workers, technology professionals, special education professionals, transportation services, cafeteria workers, teachers doing summer curriculum work, and those who provide direct service to students during the summer are all working hard to meet current needs and prepare for the opening of school in the fall.

    Since there is a lot going on there is much to talk about.  Here are a few items of interest:

    Community Eligibility Provisions (CEP) Grant will Provide Free Breakfast and Lunch for all Students

    The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) is a funding option under the National School Lunch Act that allows eligible schools to provide free meals to all students.

    While most of the schools in our area received the CEP grant in past years, New Palz just qualified for this program because our district poverty level reached the minimum requirement.  This means that beginning in September, ALL students regardless of the family’s income will have the ability to receive one free breakfast and one free lunch daily.

    This is great news for all families in our district.  I expect this announcement will lead to more questions, so here is  a list of frequently answered questions for you to peruse.   Additional information will also be forthcoming from cafeteria manager Sheila Moran in August.

    Congratulations to our new School Board Officers

    At the board meeting on Wednesday night, the board elected two new officers.  Mr. Matt Williams will serve as the Board President and Ms. Elizabeth Bonhag will serve as the Vice President for the 2024-2025 school year.  

    They replace former President Johanna Herget and former Vice President Heather O’Donnel who served the district admirably for the past three years.

    Congratulations to our new School Board Members

    At the meeting on Wednesday night, new board members Olivia Treubig and Justin Seweryn took their oaths of office.

    Olivia and Justin will each serve three year terms.  They will join current board members Heather Kort, Glenn LaPolt, and Jason Clark.

    Being a school board member is a completely unpaid position that requires a lot of hard work and dedication, including attending two school board meetings per month attending two committee or agenda setting meetings per month, and keeping up with all that one needs to know about the district to serve effectively.  Thank you very much Matt, Liz, Justin, Olivia, Heather, Glenn, and Jason for your service to the district.

    Summer Updates to the Buildings and Grounds

    As I mentioned, summers are not quiet.  The facilities department is hard at work upgrading the buildings and grounds, doing an annual deep clean of all of the buildings, and making necessary repairs.  In some cases, contractors are hired to complete necessary projects like the power washing, cleaning, and painting of some of the exterior walls and trims at Lenape and the High School.  The attention to detail of Michael Logue, Director of Facilities and operations, and the hard work of his staff, will help us to continue to have a beautiful campus.

    District Safety Plan Available for Review

    Safety remains a top priority for our school.  The District Safety Committee meets monthly to evaluate safety processes and to update safety plans.  The District has a district wide safety plan and each school building has a building safety plan.  The committee has evaluated and updated these plans during the school year. The building level plans are confidential. They will be reviewed and approved by the school board during executive sessions.  The district wide safety plan is designed to give the public a basic overview of how the district approaches safety and who in the district is responsible for various aspects of the plan.

    The updated district wide safety plan is now available for review and public comment.  You can access the plan and the form for submitting comments about the plan by following this link.

    Code of Conduct Available for Review

    Each year the code of conduct committee reviews and updates the district’s Code of Conduct.  This updated plan is now available for review and public comment in advance of the school board considering the updated version for approval in August.  If you would like to review the Code of Conduct along with proposed changes, you can do so by following this link.  Proposed additions to the document are highlighted in red.  Proposed deletions of language have strikeouts through them. If you have any comments to share about the proposed changes, please email them to me.

    Long Term Financial Planning

    After two financially difficult budget seasons, it is our belief that the budget process for the 2025-2026 school year will be challenging but not as challenging as what we just went through.  

    In order to create a situation moving forward where we do not experience wide fluctuations in the financial needs of the district, the school board has wisely tasked school administrators with the job of doing some long term financial planning with the goal of projecting out a five year analysis of what our revenues, expenses, debts, and fund balances will look like through the 2028-2029 school year.

    A couple of months ago the board had a discussion about what information we would have to have to create an effective 5 year plan.  At the board meeting on Wednesday night, we presented some information to the school board and a discussion ensued.

    One of the main factors affecting our school financially (and also in many other ways) is our declining student enrollment. A rough estimate of the enrollment moving forward can be made if we look at the fact that our last few classes entering school are all at about 100 students each.  If we take that fact and assume that the new normal is classes of 100 students, the following chart gives us an idea of the enrollment over the next 5 years:

    Declining enrollment will require our school to adapt moving forward.  At the meeting on Wednesday night we discussed with the board the need to look at all ways to save money including performing a study of the efficacy of eventually closing one of our school buildings to avoid duplicating services and to save money on busing, building maintenance, running a kitchen, custodial services, cafeteria services, administration, and office staff.  If it eventually becomes possible to consolidate buildings, a significant amount of money could be saved and revenue could be generated with the sale or leasing of a building to an outside organization.  A building usage study will be an important part of long term planning.

    Any predictions for the future must come as a result of a study of the past.  We presented some historical information about the expenses and revenue levels our district has experienced over the last few years.

    In a perfect world, a district’s revenue is exactly the same as the money they budget for and spend.  In the real world, it is wise to  try to plan to use a little bit less money to run the district than you have revenue coming in.  That way, if unexpected expenses occur (which they always do), you have a little extra money to pay for it.

    The fact that the orange bars are usually at about the same height or slightly larger than blue bars is a good sign.  When final accounting for 2023-2024 is done, we expect that our expenses will be slightly less than what we budgeted, and in line with the 2023-2024 revenue.  However, it is worth mentioning that this process has gotten more difficult in recent years because of the district’s use of fund balance (savings) to balance the budget.  If you look at 2024-2025 you can see that our voter approved budget is significantly larger than the revenue we have coming in.  This is even after the many reductions we made to reduce the budget.  The difference between the orange bar and the blue bar for 2024-2025 represents the $2,200,000 of savings we will use to balance the budget.  When all is said and done, we hope that we won’t have to use all $2,200,000 to balance the budget, but it is clear that we can not continue to do deficit spending to pay our bills.  Preliminary estimates of revenue and expenses for coming years show that the difference between revenue and expenses gets bigger each year.  Efforts will need to be made to continue to reduce expenses to reduce our dependence on savings.

    The board also discussed debt at the board meeting.  We are currently paying debt on a few projects including over $900,000 per year toward a BOCES capital project (which ends in 2026-2027) and debt payments on our last $53,000,000 capital project (spent mostly at the MS) done from 2015-2019 where we will pay over $4,000,000 per year until 2035-2036.  These expenses must be considered as we plan our finances for the future as well as when we consider a new capital project to pay for needed repairs, the upgrade of athletic facilities, and possible air conditioning upgrades.

    The school board meeting (not counting the part where new board members were elected and then we moved to executive session) can be accessed by clicking on this link.  If you want to fast forward to the 46:15 mark of the video, you can hear the board’s discussion on long term financial planning.  

    We still need your help with staffing!

    As we approach the 2024-2025 school year we still find ourselves very short on cafeteria, custodial, aides, monitors, and teaching subs.  If you have any interest in helping us out or working for the school, we would love to have you.  In many cases, no experience is needed.  Please check our website by clicking on this link to employment, or drop me an email if you are interested in more information about these opportunities.

    Continuing Education Program shaping up nicely

    As you are probably aware, we are currently working to create a continuing education program for students and adults to run from September through November.  We appreciate all of those school and community members who have already submitted proposals to offer programming.  We are still accepting proposals until July 26th.  You can propose an offering by clicking on this link.  We plan to have our continuing education course catalog available by mid-August.

    That concludes my update.  Thank you for reading.  I hope you can get out and enjoy the nice weather.  Please send any comments or questions my way.  I look forward to receiving them.

    Regards,

    Stephen Gratto - Superintendent