School officials make spending cuts

School administrators and Board of Education members have sliced $107,000 from its previous spending plan for the 2026-27 school year in the few weeks since its second budget workshop.

That resulted from restructuring salary and benefit programs for some staff members and $25,000 was saved by renewing its intermunicipal agreement with East Hampton for most of its transportation needs, said Superintendent Brian Doelger, Ed.D.

More efforts are afoot to further expand  intermunicipal agreements with East Hampton. Some savings came with transferring some of its previous services through Eastern Suffolk BOCES to East Hampton. East Hampton costs for comparable programs is less than what it cost the district to use the same programs through BOCES.

The current budget proposal stands at $13.91 million with a commitment from Mr. Doelger and the Board of Education to continue to seek other spending cuts and more sources of revenues right up to the April 20 date at which a proposal for the May 19 vote is scheduled to be finalized. The current increase is 4.63% more than the current budget.

The critical number is the effort to reduce the tax levy — the amount of spending covered by taxpayers — to 7% from 9.48% where it currently stands. Plans call for efforts to reduce spending year after year to keep within the tax cap.

To get there, it’s necessary to find either $291,103 to cut in spending or some combination of revenue increases and cuts to account for that amount.

That may seem far away, but Mr. Doelger said he has hopes basic school foundation aid from the state will increase and the district could receive as much as $100,000 in aid for its Pre-K3 program since Governor Kathy Hochul has called for giving schools $10,000 per student for such programs and the district expects to have 10 students enrolled.

With reduced reserves, dependency of applying money from budgets that had not been spent to future budgets is also becoming something the district can’t do in the amounts it has in the past, Mr. Doelger said.

He noted it has been 10 years of budgets that didn’t pierce the tax cap until it became necessary to preserve existing programs for this year. But voters turned thumbs down on that initial budget and the Pre-K3 program had to be sacrificed along with cuts to other programs to produce a spending plan voters would approve.

There have also been cuts in staffing, mostly by not replacing people who retire, Mr. Doelger said. There is one class – eighth graders — with only four students now. But the district can’t eliminate that class. One parent told the Board of Education Monday night her child is in that class and gets a lot of positives from the attention that teacher is able to give those students.

All the East End schools have had reductions in enrollments, Mr. Doelger said. But to send those students to an off Island school would mean spending on tuition and transportation that would be higher than what it costs to continue to educate them on the Island.

Several taxpayers and students attended Monday night’s budget workshop, a rarity most years when only a few people attend the budget workshops. They came with questions, thoughts about ways to cut spending and, from the students, a question about restoring the winter track team. The students had done some homework and understood that program, cut for the current year, probably can’t be restored, but sought some way to keep the activity alive, even if on an ad hoc basis.

The students simply sought support for exploring ideas for an activity important for a small but enthusiastic group of student who value winter track.

Mr. Doelger said he hated to lose the program this year and was open to helping the students to try to find a way, even if it has to be just a local activity to keep the team together.

Linda Zavatto had questions and suggestions for the Board, including whether there might be grants to augment local money.

Assistant Superintendent Jennifer Rylott said the school has some grants and applies for those it believes it might receive, but grant money is not as available as it once was.

Ms. Zavatto asked about cutting programs, something school officials are reluctant to do because of achievements students have attained because of their advancements in academic achievements.

Board members added their voices to make a case for at least keeping existing programs without further cuts. The only cut mad for this year that is likely to remain in the spending plan for next year is restoration of the Pre-K 3 program, so important to many Island working parents.

The next budget workshop had been set for March 16 but is likely to be canceled to allow time for more effort to explore spending cuts and revenue sources. Instead, March 30, that has been planned on an “if needed” basis is likely to be the next workshop.