The Lansing Central School District’s final budget presentation for the 2024-25 budget showed that the district is cutting expenses in order to address a $2.4 million gap between the district’s $38,703,408 proposed expenses and its $36,262,074 projected budget for the 2024-25 school year.
Kate Heath, assistant superintendent of business administration for Lansing Central School District, gave the presentation to the board of education at its Monday, March 25 meeting. She said that the district must balance its budget, whether by increasing revenue or cutting expenses.
Heath took a moment to explain the tax cap to voters, and said budget sustainability is important, with boards of education having to consider the consequences for going under the tax cap. She said that current laws regarding the tax cap encourage school districts to go to the cap each year, since if they do not, they will limit how much they can collect in taxes in future years, something she says happened to Lansing three or four years ago.
“We made the decision- and it was still the right decision- to go under the cap at that time,” Heath said, “but the next year we had to go over the cap to make up for the lost revenue that we had. Even though we wouldn’t have collected any more because we went under the cap, the cap was lower the following year, if that makes sense.”
Heath said the district can tap into reserves if necessary, but those reserves are for one-time uses, and will be gone once they’re used. She said the district tries to stay at the legal limit for the fund balance- 4% of the budget- and has a projected increase of $759,906.
Heath mentioned that the district would be making some “rightsizing” to help balance the budget by reducing positions based on declining enrollment- three classroom positions, one special education position, one multi-tiered support system position and two teaching assistants. She said none of the reductions will affect people- the people in these positions are already leaving, or the positions are currently vacant, meaning the district will not have to lay off staff.
Heath also brought up similar non-layoff reductions for unfilled groundskeeper and finance clerk positions, as well as reducing a part-time communications specialist position. She said the district would also look to cut spending with curriculum writing, furniture, technology, larger field trips and conferences. She said she was working on a more extensive list of possible expenses to cut.
In order to explain the “rightsizing” due to declining enrollment Heath shared enrollment statistics, showing that enrollment at Lansing Elementary School has steadily declined since 2018, middle school enrollment has fluctuated in that time period and high school enrollment has overall increased despite a slight decline this year. In all three schools, the percentage of students who are economically disadvantaged has increased, with the percentage going up after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Sometimes, it’s not just about enrollment,” Heath said, “it’s also about the needs that our students have and the services they need so we can support them.”
Using projected live birth data for Lansing, Heath projected a decrease in enrollment in Lansing schools over the next several years. There are 67 students in the kindergarten class for the 2023-24 school year, and there will be 63 kindergarteners in the 2024-25 school year, 66 in 2025-26 and 65 in 2026-27. Because of this change and other factors, the district is expected to lose two or three dozen students per year, out of 1,101 currently attending this year, over the next few years.
Heath said that despite cutting about $820,000 in expenses due to the cuts she mentioned, there is still a $2.4 million gap between the expenses and revenue. She said state aid might give Lansing Central School District some relief, since she believes it will be different from the governor’s proposal even if she is uncertain of the exact number. Heath also expressed her hope that the state budget would arrive before April 24, but added that if it did not, the district would proceed based on what they knew about state aid.
The full budget presentation will be given at the board’s next meeting on Monday, April 15, which was rescheduled from its original April 8 date to accommodate the solar eclipse. The board will give its final approval of the budget at its Wednesday, April 24 meeting and will hold a public hearing and Meet the Candidates event at 6 p.m. on Monday, May 13. The budget vote will be held from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday, May 21, in the Lansing Elementary School cafeteria.