Health & Fitness
Briarcliff School Board Needs to Be Straight With the Public
Briarcliff School Board misleads the public about the District's finances.
School Board Member Jon Satran discussed at length at the February 25th BOE meeting why he believed the calculation of tax levy per pupil was important. In reality, this analysis is meaningless. Briarcliff happens to have a large amount of "Other Revenues" as we collect about $3 million of tuition revenue, much of which is for our students from Pocantico. We also have a relatively large amount of state aid compared to some other similarly sized districts (about $1.8 million more than Irvington and about $1 million more than Edgemont). These "Other Revenues" reduce the total tax levy and therefore the tax levy per pupil, but don't reduce the amount of money we are spending to educate our children.
Consider this example: suppose it costs $100,000 to run my household and $100,000 to operate your household, but I have a rich aunt who likes me and gives me $50,000 a year. My saying that I’m only spending $50,000 while you are spending $100,000 would be comparable to saying Briarcliff has a lower tax levy per pupil.
The real number to look at is cost per pupil and our rollover budget represents a cost of $33,000 per pupil—approaching the cost of Hackley.
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The Board recently sent an email that said, “the total (state and federal) aid received by the district has declined by roughly $670,000 since 2009.” While that may be true, state aid has increased in the last few years. It dipped to as low as $3,320,000 in 2011-2012, is projected to be $3,615,000 in the current year, and will be $3,864,000 in 2013-2014, increasing our revenue stream by $544,000 over a two year time frame, not hurting us.
They said “total annual expenditures are down nearly 10% since 2009.” The truth is, that actual expenses went from $47,264,841 in 2008-2009 to $47,050,000 in 2012-2013—almost flat.
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This misrepresentation only reminds us that our pre-2009 School Boards used to over-budget and over-tax you. What did decrease by 10% over time was the School Budget. The old School Boards budgeted $52,000,000 but spent $47,000,000—they overtaxed you. It looks like our new school Board wants to return to the old ways of over-budgeting and over-taxing.
The Board needs to accurately reflect our District’s financial resources, rather than mislead the public and make excuses.
