Category: Whitehall

The Whitehall School District will have an election Tuesday, May 15th between 12:00 noon and 9:00 p.m. in the Large Group Instructional Room of the Junior/Senior High School on Buckley Road:

1.) To adopt next years budget.
2.) To elect three (3) members of the school board.

I am planning on submitting questionnaires to all those running for the school board.

My disappointment with the school board for some time has been that the steady yearly declines in enrollment have not translated into reduced property taxes.

In the past few days, school district “report cards” were released for the 2010-2011 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 (2011-2012) and projections for next year (2012-2013) are not available. However as you can see, 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. So here is a table (compiled from public sources) for the last seven years of available data.

As you can see, there has been an overall drop in total enrollment of almost 15% during the last seven years. Enrollment has declined every year during that time.

The three biggest individual yearly losses of students: 30, 36, and 26, have all happened over the last three years. In other words, the decline in yearly enrollment is accelerating.

When the school board claims they have cut spending, they have.

Except that it all comes from the state aid side as the state of New York has cut its aid to school districts.

The falling enrollment has not amounted to any cuts in property taxes. Losing 132 students over a seven year period (92 in the last three) resulted in no property tax savings for the local property taxpayers.

So there are the enrollment numbers for you to see.

The Post Star has an article on the recent deliberations by the school board on next year’s budget.

You can read the Post Star article here.

While it’s nice to learn that the school board is taking some steps to control next year’s budget, the entire story still leads to more local stagnation.

Local property taxes still go up under next year’s budget, enrollment is projected to fall again (per student spending continues to rise), and funds will be moved from reserve accounts to balance the budget. At the end of the day, the school district is working on a proposed budget of $13,205,125 for approximately 750 students!

To put this in context, calculated on a per-student basis, this approaches or exceeds the tuition for many elite private schools across the country. However, Whitehall is ranked as one of the lower performing schools in the state. Because the school district’s enrollment has declined, and is predicted to decline further in the future, this should be the perfect time to be cutting spending and property taxes.

An easy way to look at a school’s enrollment is to take the students graduating from high school and see if the pre-school/kindergarten enrollment for the next year matches, falls below, or exceeds the number graduating.

A hypothetical example follows. Take a school where 120 students graduate and 60 students enter for a number of years. As time goes by, instead of needing roughly six classes per grade (calculated at 20 students per class) only three classes per grade would be necessary to accommodate the lower enrollment. The class size of 20 students per class though would stay the same.

If managed properly, the number of classes per grade fall as the overall enrollment declines and the younger grades graduate to the next level. Once again, if instituted correctly, the number of classes shrink as the lower grades move up through the school.

However, public sentiment can be manipulated if proposals are made to cut classes in grades with higher enrollment. Take the hypothetical example above; if you told the parents in a grade with 120 students, that half the teachers in that grade would be eliminated, and class sizes were going to jump to 40 students per class, there would be a public outcry.

If managed improperly, there are wild differences in class size and the number of classes by grade. Public sentiment can be easily swayed with arguments over increased class size.

Sadly Whitehall’s destruction of its tax base is noticeable by all; businesses have left, houses sit on the market unsold, people leave for jobs elsewhere. So while we’re paying property taxes like our local district is an elite private school, we’re dealing with one of the lowest ranked districts in the state. The numbers tell a story. Throwing money at the problem has been shown not to work. The only way to turn things around is to cut property taxes. Until the school board learns that lesson, Whitehall’s demise will sadly continue.

For those that may have missed it, the Post Star did an excellent expose this past weekend on local school districts that regularly overcharge the taxpayers and stick these overcharges in “reserve funds”.

By law, a school district is allowed to keep an unreserved fund balance that equals 4 percent of the upcoming year’s budget. However many districts have kept more than this on hand and simply create other reserve accounts for different items.

The school districts and their supporters do not like it when challenged on this and “jeer” at those who complain about school spending. I have been a critic of this practice for some time and intend to continue.

Recently I’ve heard a new and novel argument from these same people that spending from these different accounts “can’t offset taxes.” What this simplistic argument overlooks is that all school expenditures – regardless of which accounts they come from — come from the taxpayers.

In the case of our local school district, most dollars come from taxpayers residing in Dresden and Whitehall, and a small shrinking amount comes from state aid, which itself comes from guess who? The taxpayers.

If money for a “comfortable” gym and plush building (where enrollment is plummeting like rock) comes from a reserve account which can’t be used to offset taxes, the fact remains that the taxpayers filled that reserve account after the Board overcharged on the yearly budget and put only one option in front of the voters; to put the money in a reserve account. It is a sad shame that the powers that be in the school district continue down this road when it will not assist a student get into a better college or get a job, as businesses continue to flee Whitehall and their oppressive property taxes.

Please read the entire Post Star piece. My favorite line is where Superintendent Ella Collins of the Abraham Wing School in Glens Falls is reported as saying this when questioned about her school districts fund balance of $621,642, which equals 16 percent of the budget.

“Collins said the surplus piled up because of expenses that came in below budget.”

Hmmm ….. must have really come in under budget.

Ms. Collins should talk to the Whitehall School Board, where they have come in under budget for over 10 years and keep raising taxes. But then again, we can’t use the excess to offset taxes.