Category: The Landing

Last night the Whitehall school board presented the 2013 -2014 school budget that will go before the voters next week. The board has adopted a total budget of $13,733,985 that calls for a 2.19 percent increase in the tax levy. The district also received $418,000 more in state aid than it did last year. This is 5.71 percent increase in state aid.

The total budget for the current school year (2012-2013) is $13,205,125. If you include the increases in state aid and the tax levy, spending will increase $528,860 between this year and next.

If you take the total proposed 2013-2014 budget and divide it by the last publicly available enrollment numbers from the prior year (742 total students), the Whitehall school district is spending over $18,500 per student.

Residents of the district can vote on the budget, Tuesday, May 21st.

Some important dates to put on your local calendar for May regarding the school district.

Presentation of the 2013-2014 school budget.
Monday, May 13th
Large Group Instruction Room
High School
7:00 pm

Vote to adopt the 2013-2014 school budget and to elect one (1) member to a 5-year term on the school board.
Tuesday, May 21st
Large Group Instruction Room
High School
12:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Just recently, school district “report cards” were released for the 2011-2012 school year. (Last year’s school year.) This is the last publicly available information on enrollment. So the most up to date information is for the LAST school year.

Numbers for the current school year (2012-2013) and projections for next year (2013-2014) are not currently available and are only released after budgeting is done for that year. I’d like to see projections for the following year’s enrollment be released as part of the budgeting process for that year but that’s another issue. However as readers of the Huletts Current already know, enrollment has been falling in the Whitehall School District (and is projected to continue to fall) while property taxes have increased over the same period. This is an update to my yearly enrollment table reflecting the most recently released enrollment numbers. When people talk to me about the Huletts Current, I get many positive comments about the coverage of this issue.

	04-05	05-06	06-07	07-08	08-09	09-10	10-11	11-12	% Change
# Students	885	860	858	845	815	779	753	742	-16.15%

The table illustrates that there has been an overall drop in total enrollment of 16.15% during the last eight years. Enrollment has declined every year during that time.

However the problem still remains, the population of New York continues to migrate to other states. This phenomenon can be seen clearly in Whitehall, where the local tax base is not conducive to attracting residents or business investment.

While the state has cut back on it’s share of aid to the district, the falling enrollment has not amounted to any cuts in property taxes. Losing 143 students over an eight year period has resulted in no property tax savings for the local property taxpayers. Hence, a spiraling decline in enrollment never results in lower property taxes, fueling the falling enrollment.