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October 20, 2024
Dear Students, Parents, Faculty, Staff, and Community Members,
I hope you are enjoying the beautiful autumn weather. Things are very busy at school as 5 week progress reports have gone home for MS and HS students, open houses have been conducted in all buildings, fall sports are nearing the end of their seasons, field trips have been happening, and fall activities abound.
Wednesday night was particularly busy as the school board held their second meeting of October. Here is a recap of the board meeting and other things that are going on.
Happy School Board Appreciation Week
Last Week was School Board Appreciation week in New York State. It is important that we recognize and thank our dedicated school board members, President Matt Williams, Vice President Liz Bonhag, Glenn LaPolt, Heather Kort, Jason Clark, Justin Seweryn, and Olivia Treubig. These elected members work completely as volunteers with no pay. They give up a great deal of their time not only attending school board meetings and committee meetings, but also doing all of the research and preparation school board members must do to perform their duties effectively. While the many tough decisions they make may not always make everyone happy, it is important to realize that they work hard to listen to all opinions, understand every situation, and make the best decisions possible for our students. Thank you school board members for your dedicated service to our district!
School Board Finalizes Capital Project Propositions
After nearly two years of community input, analysis of the 5 year building conditions survey, research and discussion by the district facilities committee and the NPCSD school board, on Wednesday night the board approved three propositions that will be brought to the voters on January 16, 2025.
Proposition #1 includes items associated with safety, energy efficiency and updates that are essential/appropriate for the operation of the school district. Proposition #2 is related to athletic facilities, audio visual, and adding air conditioning to large group spaces. Proposition #3 involves the building of an aquatics center to be attached to the back of the high school. Since Proposition #1 is considered to be highly essential, Proposition #1 must pass in order for Propositions #2 or #3 to pass.
Here is some more specific information about the three proposals:
The school board realizes that the costs of these projects are not insignificant. Voters will need to be provided with a lot of information about the proposals so they can make the best decisions possible. Therefore, the board will be scheduling community information/Q & A sessions where voters can come and get more information and get their specific questions answered by administrators, board members and/or architects. Our first information session will be held in November, shortly after an anticipated official capital project resolution will be passed at the school board meeting on November 6th. Information about the project and the community information sessions, along with other important dates, will be mailed out to all taxpayers soon after the November 6th school board meeting. A web page connected to our school web page has been created so that all information about the proposed capital project will be readily available in one place. Click here to access the capital project web page.
Please feel free to send me any questions or requests for information you might have. We appreciate the opportunity to answer your questions and we hope you will give us the opportunity to do so rather than relying on social media or other sources for information.
A Look Ahead at the 2025-2026 Budget Process
The 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 budget cycles were difficult. Decreasing enrollment created a situation where our staffing levels did not match our staffing needs in many cases. The hiring of full time staff with federal grant money put us in a position where we could no longer afford to pay for employees hired early in the pandemic because the grant money was going away.
Through a significant tightening of our belts over the last two years and a reduction in staff that brought us more in line with our needs for our current enrollment, we were able to create responsible budgets that kept all programs in place and did not require us to exceed the tax cap.
As we look at the upcoming 2025-2026 budget process, there are still many things that we do not know.
We don’t know how much our employee health insurance costs will go up. Keeping up with skyrocketing healthcare costs is one of the biggest budget challenges schools around NYS are facing.
We also have three outstanding employee contracts that we have yet to settle. While we anticipate settling these contracts soon, the percentage pay increase of these employees is unknown at this point so we do not know the ultimate impact on the bottom line of the district.
We also do not know what our school tax rate will be for 2025-2026. Although the state calls it a 2% tax cap, the actual percentage by which a school district can raise their taxes each year varies and is based on a complicated formula for which we don’t yet have the information we need to come up with a calculation. Since a large percentage of our revenue comes from the taxpayers, a fluctuation in this rate (generally somewhere between 1% and 4%) will have a large impact on our bottom line and on the amount of taxes our community members will pay.
We also depend on state aid to finance our school. A group called the Rockefeller Institute has been tasked by the state with the job of redoing the foundation aid formula, the formula that has been used for many years to calculate how much state aid NYS schools get. On December 1, the Rockefeller Institute Foundation Aid Study is supposed to come out with a new foundation aid formula which will likely not work in our favor. It is widely believed that factors that will affect school aid will include decreasing enrollment, combined wealth ratio (a measure of the wealth of the residents of a district and the property values), and the percentage of students who are eligible for free or reduced lunch. We believe the fact that we have decreasing enrollment, a high combined wealth ratio, and a low percentage of students in poverty will result in the new foundation aid formula not being favorable to the New Paltz School DIstrict. To put it simply, if we end up getting as much state aid in 2025-2026 as we got in 2024-2025, we will be very fortunate. No state aid increase is anticipated
So here is the bottom line. We don’t know exactly what our budget outlook will be for next year, but early calculations and estimates indicate that 2025-2026 will be very similar to 2024-2025.
I do not intend to give a message filled with gloom and doom, but I think it is appropriate to give you an honest picture of what lies ahead, especially as you consider a very expensive capital project and as the board considers requests from community members such as the reinstatement/creation of positions including athletic trainer or armed security guards.
Rest assured, we will provide you and the school board with accurate financial information when we receive it. We will provide all the financial information we can so you have the correct financial picture in December in advance of the January capital project vote. State aid and tax cap information will allow us to be even more accurate in February and March when we consider how to balance the needs of our students with the need to make our revenue cover our expenses
You may now be asking yourself if now is a good time to do an expensive capital project. This is a decision that only the voters can make. However, I encourage our voters to consider this point: It is essential to take care of and properly maintain our infrastructure and facilities. Failure to do so will end up costing us more money in the long run.
Auditors Report - More Interesting Than You Might Expect
I rarely sit around on a saturday night with a bowl of popcorn and read auditors reports. However, at the board meeting on Wednesday night, our external auditor gave a pretty interesting presentation about our finances. You can watch the entire meeting by clicking on this link.
The auditors' presentation can be found by forwarding to the 1:00:00 mark of the meeting. If you want to learn more about where our finances stand after the 2023-2024 school year, this is a good place to go. I am pleased that, while it was a difficult financial year, the auditor was able to verify our numbers and confirm for the board and the community that our financial records are complete and accurate. If you want to follow along with the presentation you can access the full auditors report by clicking on this link.
If you don’t have enough popcorn to get you through the full auditor presentation, I encourage you to skip to the 1:12:37 mark of the video where the auditor talks about our fund balance. He responds to a particular question about whether or not the district has enough fund balance. I bring this particular point up for two specific reasons. The first is that I am often asked why we have so much fund balance and why we are not using our fund balance to pay for recurring expenses. The other reason is that we use a significant amount of fund balance to close budgetary gaps each year. This is an example of deficit spending. Last year we used over $2,000,000 just to balance the budget. We anticipate having to do so in 2025-2026 and it will likely still require us to make significant reductions to balance the budget.
If you have any questions about these points or about what the auditor has to say, please send them my way.
Athletics, Special Education, and Technology
At the board meeting Greg Warren, Athletic Director; Mellisa Thomas, Pupil Personnel Director; and Keith Baisley, Director of Technology, each gave a presentation on what their department does and how things have been going for their departments this school year. These presentations begin at the 3:08 mark of the video. I would like to thank Greg, Mellisa, and Keith for the fine job they do running their departments and I would like to thank their staff for all they do for our students.
Community Survey to Help Generate District Goals
In September, members from all constituent groups were invited to take a survey about all things related to the New Paltz Central School District. Results were analyzed and summarized in a presentation that was given at the 43:44 mark of the board meeting.
The purpose of the survey was to gain information that the school board could use to generate goals for the 2024-2025 school year and beyond. The survey closed at the end of September.
At the board meeting on Wednesday, I gave a presentation on the results of the survey. One purpose of the presentation was to show how this year’s results compare to last year’s results in an effort to see how well we are progressing toward the accomplishment of our goals from 2023-2024. The other purpose of the presentation was to provide a summary of what the community identified as their top priorities for the 2024-2025 school year.
After the regular board meeting on Wednesday night, the board held a special public workshop where they discussed the results and talked about how the current goals might best be updated for 2024-2025. Good progress was made and updated district goals will be released soon.
Continuing Education Program
The inaugural NPCSD continuing education program continues to go well. This coming week will be particularly filled with activity. Everyone is welcome to attend and we encourage you to help spread the word. Here is the schedule for this coming week:
A Busy Time of Year
As I mentioned at the beginning of this message, there is a lot going on. I continue to marvel at what our students accomplish both inside and outside of the classrooms and I commend all of the teachers, administrators, parents, club advisors, coaches, and staff members who work hard to make the opportunities available for our students.
It can really be a challenge keeping up with all that is going on. I advise you to check our facebook and instagram pages regularly. In an effort to help you keep it all straight, I will end with a summary of some of the things we have to look forward to in the near future.
Best Wishes,
Stephen Gratto - Superintendent
Important Dates Provided by the High School
October 24 ENL Family Night @ 6-8:00 @ the Middle School
October 28 School Bookings Link opens for Parent Teacher Conferences
October 31 Marching Band @ NP Halloween Parade w/MS
November 5 Superintendent Conference Day/Election Day/No Students
November 8 End of First Quarter
November 11 Holiday-Veterans Day/No School
November 13 PTSA Meeting @ HS Library 6:00 pm
November 13, 14 Senior Picture Retake Day-Last call
November 14-16 HS Drama Production @ 7:30 pm
November 15 Superintendent Conference Day
November 15 Report Card Distribution
November 18 JV/V Winter Sports
November 19 Parent Teacher Conferences 6:00-8:00 pm
November 20 Picture-retake Day for Underclassmen
November 22-23 HS Area All-State Festival @ Suffern
November 27-29 Holiday-Thanksgiving break
Important Dates Provided by the Middle School
Important Dates Provided by Lenape
November 1 PTA food drive begins
November 7 3rd Grade Hoedown 6:00 pm
November 14 Duzine Parent Teacher Conferences 6 pm - 8 pm
November 15 Duzine Parent Teacher Conferences 9 am - 3 pm
December 17 Winter Concert
Important Dates Provided by Duzine
October 31 - Halloween Parades 10 am - 2:30 pm
November 1 - Duzine/Lenape PTA Food Drive Begins
November 5 - No School for Students
November 14 - Duzine Parent Teacher Conferences 6 - 8 pm
November 15 - Duzine Parent Teacher Conferences 9 - 3 pm
November 19 - Duzine/Lenape PTA meeting 6:30 pm in Duzine Library
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