Verona School Board Introduces $31.6 Million Spending Plan

The Verona K-12 Board of Education introduced its tentative 2011-2012 spending plan Wednesday that included less severe cuts than were alluded to in a Feb. 15 letter from Superintendent Charles Sampson, but still includes some staff cuts to keep up with rising healthcare costs.

The proposed $31.6 million budget would be supported by a tax levy of $27,158,547, an increase of 2 percent, or $532,000, and would result in an average $106 per-household school tax increase.

Last year voters approved a 4 percent tax levy increase, which carried an average school tax hike of $290 per household.

In an effort to meet the 2 percent cap on property tax increases imposed by Gov. Chris Christie for the first time this year, and to keep up with the 8.9 percent increase in the cost of healthcare for school employees, Board of Education President John Quattrocchi said 10 part-time instructional aide positions would be eliminated, which he said sliced $210,000 from the budget. An additional $75,000 in reductions was realized through utilities savings, and $25,000 was saved due to breakage, or the difference in salaries between retiring teachers on the high end of the pay scale and a newly hired one, for a grand total of $310,000 in cuts.

Sampson's Feb. 15 letter to the district said the board may have to cut as much as $700,000 from the budget.

Quattrocchi said some of the impact of the cuts was blunted when the district learned late last month that $275,000 of its state school aid had been restored for the 2011-2012 school year, though it was still a fraction of the nearly $1.4 million in aid the district received in 2009-2010.

"The state funds helped a lot. It helps mitigate some of the cuts because without it there would have been more we would have had to chop out that we feel strongly about keeping," he said.

However, Quattrocchi said the district was not immune to the slow bleed of prolonged budget cuts.

"It's going to continue to be extremely tight. We're among the lowest per-pupil spending district around if you compare the data, so by definition we're not flush with cash. If we were, we would have a lot of fat to cut, so continuing to cut and cut and cut is not sustainable," he said.

Quattrocchi said he believes the concept of a property tax cap is sound, but said its rigidity in how it makes no provisions for districts that spend conservatively puts the district in a perilous position.

"We're looking at a world where very soon an increase in class size is inevitable."

The school board is scheduled to adopt a final budget on March 29. Voters will consider the final spending plan at the polls on April 27.