Following is Superintendent Rex Germer’s Report from the Town of Webb Union Free School District’s Board of Education meeting held on December 1st.
—
The Town of Webb Union Free School District is continuing to hear that there will be changes to the APPR, specifically its connection to student scores, coming in the near future.
Governor Cuomo is being brought into the conversation as a supporter of the change, which goes against his previous push to make the connection stronger during the last budgetary cycle.
It is believed Common Core curriculum changes are in the works as well.
The final version of the latest Federal education act has apparently just been released with a congressional vote scheduled to adopt the latest reforms at that level.
• We will be looking to jump back into policy review this coming calendar year. It has taken some time to go through our policy book and compare it to some other schools to see if there are gaps or needs we haven’t addressed.
A full policy review as part of a BOCES service would be lengthy and costly, but could prove beneficial to fully evaluate and validate what we currently have in our books.
• The budgetary cycle is again knocking on the door. We will have to take a good look at all of our rates of pay, including sub rates, as we begin to build the budget for the next school year.
With increases in the minimum wage and a decrease in available substitutes in certain areas, it is becoming challenging to meet the demands of the District.
Many changes and controls are coming together to create a potential “perfect storm.”
Minimum wage, the Affordable Care Act with health care costs as a maximum percentage of pay, as well as the cost of the plans and the Cadillac tax/penalties, a Tax Cap that is expected to be near 0% before being entered into the formula, and the standard increase in costs of doing business, are all going to put a strain on our abilities to continue moving forward in the way we are accustomed to doing.
The budget is built with huge unknowns each year.
One unknown is the amount of revenue we will receive from the State in terms of aides.
Traditionally we are not funded well and we rely on tax payer dollars to fund the majority of our budgetary needs; but that becomes more difficult in a year like the one coming up where the Tax Levy Limit is predicted to be so low across the state, which specifically reduces our ability to raise revenue from local tax dollars which is essentially the life blood of our budget.
Another area that contains many unknown costs is within the continuing negotiations with the teachers association.
• Our presentation at the last meeting by Mrs. Amos brings up an idea to recognize, at graduation, all of the hours our students put into this community and various organizations.
The thought was to identify those students achieving 150 hours of volunteer work on both their person with a colored chord much like those worn to designate graduates who are members of the National Honor Society and to have a designation on the diploma in the form of a seal.
I would suggest using Mrs. Amos to continue to track and verify hours as separate from required organizational hours and provide the administration with a list of students achieving the minimum accumulated hours by the end of quarter 3 of their senior year, so that they may be recognized in the program and with blue chords at graduation.